Safely up at Vic Falls and heading into Botswana tomorrow. Just a quick note to say we are adding several films to the site and some new entries from us and the girls – some date a few weeks back. The blog is date-ordered so you will need to scroll down to see them.
Africa
Victoria Falls is one of the seven wonders of the world.
There was a sort of magic that made Vic Falls feel like it was a different realm. The paths that led to all the viewpoints looked almost natural (they are manmade with pebbles) and the vegetation was like a tropical rain forest, totally different from where we’d been. The water comes thundering down. We were cold and wet – five minutes away you’d be warm and sunny.
As we got further out it started getting more wet – the waterfall was getting rougher and all the water was spraying up. We were wearing shorts and t-shirts…and non waterproof rain jackets!
I think it’s kind of arrogant that Livingstone came and named it after his Queen (Victoria) and he didn’t even bother to ask what the Africans called it. If Livingstone hadn’t come we may be calling it a different name now.
Zimbabwe means Stone House. Great Zimbabwe is a ruin of the oldest and biggest city in Southern Africa which was built about a thousand years ago.
The King used to live in the Hill Complex (where the big photo is taken from) and his first and favourite wife lived in the Great Enclosure in the valley below (you can see it small on the right of the big photo). The royal family members used to live in huts outside the walls.
It was really fun to think that people actually used to live in the enclosures. When you were inside the walls, it didn’t really look like it was a ruin at all. We wondered why there weren’t markings and paintings on the stone walls from the people who’d lived there. From up on the hill it looked like a maze of stone walls. There used to be huts everywhere but they’d all been washed away hundreds of years ago.
I can’t believe that we actually stood somewhere where a king had once stood.
Crossed over through Beira Corridor into Mutare (Marion we thought of you and your trip in the 60s) – amazing stay in mist-covered Vumba in the Eastern Highlands – then last night at Great Zimbabwe (I’d forgotten how extraordinary it is).
Zim is achingly beautiful, heartbreaking, inspiring, tragic, breathtaking, friendly, bursting with food and curios and livestock and crops and generous-spiritedness after a month in a tough Mozambique. Easy to get diesel. Between Mutare and Masvingo we crossed through 15 roadblocks – all of them friendly.
We’re staying the next 2 nights in the Matopos (Rhodes’ grave) then heading up for a few nights at Vic Falls. Plan to cross into Botswana through Kasaane on Mon or Tues next week.
Maybe we have been spending too much time together…
Films from Vumba in the Eastern Highlands, Great Zimbabwe and the Matopos.
Maybe it’s because we are nearly halfway through, Ralph has stopped checking whether we are ‘on schedule’ (as far as I know, he is quite stealthy) and I have stopped worrying about being ‘unproductive’. I know on the videos I am almost always on the laptop, but in fact I have hardly worked at all, maybe a few hours in the last month. I write the blog, and process photos, on the long car journeys, there would be very little blogging without these free hours.
Saying that, I love the photo below- a latter-day Snow White, eternally entombed in mozzie net in a cheap hotel room, in an apple-induced trance.
Emotionally, the glorious technicolour is a pretty true reflection of our states of mind. Aside from a slight melancholic day in Pomene, a few hours in the doldrums here and there, some minor irritations, and Ralph and my predictable ongoing existential-lite crises, we are all extremely happy and lovedup!
Right now we’re driving along, (big, pot-holed driving day to get near to Zim border) listening to the Mila music mix – singing really loud to Noah and the Whale (Mila is reaaaaally into them at the moment) Nikki Bluhm, Dawes and the Beatles.
After Pomene, a breathtaking sailing and snorkeling trip through the Bazaruto Archipeligo has marked a turning point in the trip. It was one of the few things Ralph really wanted to do, back in Marin Ralph would periodically call me over his computer, to admire google (to ogle google = to gogle? or to oogle?) images of Bazaruto.
After being thwarted by the weather for a while, Ralph finally chartered our own dhow to sail us on an overnight trip to Bazaruto. We arrived at the sailing company, a bit late as we’d run out of suntan lotion and had spent an hour tracking down THE LAST BOTTLE of suntan lotion for sale in Vilankulos (pop. 50,000) It was Factor 15 and cost $30!!
We were hugely excited, and standing there was a Spanish backpacker. Turns out the charter company had told this guy he could join us. Hm, the look on Ralph’s face told me this could not be. One way and another this was conveyed to the backbacker. He was very ungracious about it and as he left, Ralph apologised one last time and he said “I hope you enjoy… your SELFISH trip”. Anyway he kind of looked and sounded like the villain from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Last Ark just before he melts before the Covenant, so we felt relieved rather than too bad.
At last we went snorkelling with amazing visibility and abundant fish. Ralph ran up and down dunes till he could hardly stand. We ate grilled kingfish and cabbage salad in the shade of the sails. We saw a dolphin, ate rolos, played charades and Bea and I leant a Portuguese folk song from our guide, Rosario. What a brilliantly selfish trip!
That Factor 15 has left me looking so tanned, and my hair is so unruly, that I look like a snapshot of a super-tanned, permed 1980’s South African mom. My mom! Yes mom you know those photos from Plett…The only thing missing is the shiny lipstick and light eyeshadow! Loving it! Mila asked Ralph “are you growing side-bangs? so I guess we’re all letting it hang loose.
This was particularly good fun…