Day 25, continued…
We continued out of town heading Northwest, then turned right towards the river. Sam was following a (typical) dirt road through some very pretty countryside. It was mostly brushy, but occasionally the river could be seen through gaps in the brush, sometimes quite close at hand. And sometimes the brush gave way to trees and grass.
At one point we were met by a park vehicle carrying a number of men. The driver stopped and spoke for a while with Sam in their local language. Sam later told us that apparently all of the vultures we had seen earlier had been circling a dead elephant which had reportedly been killed by poachers! Or so he was told by the driver of the park vehicle. We headed on along the river.
After several bird sightings with no picture opportunity we saw the waterbuck below. He paused to look at us long enough for us to get a good shot of him.
I don't think I'd like having a bull's eye painted on MY rear!
At about 1:00, Sam told us he had to turn around and head back to town, so we retraced our path along the river. We were driving fairly fast since we hadn't seen much on the way in, and the game drive was now over. Suddenly Carol said sharply, "Stop! There is some large animal in the brush back there!"
Sam stopped, and backed up. Sure enough, there were two antelope nearly hidden in the foliage. I couldn't imagine how Carol had noticed them. Sam identified them for us as Kudu, another species we had never seen before.
There were actually two of them, but hard to see.
We watched the two of them for a few minutes. Linda commented that it was a shame we didn't see an adult male, as they have very impressive horns. The Kudu moved on into the brush and disappeared, so we proceeded to the main road and turned toward town. Our plan for the afternoon was to have a late lunch/early supper in the middle of the afternoon, then tour the Zimbabwe side of Victoria Falls on foot, and maybe visit the local market for some souvenir/gift shopping. Tomorrow we were flying home!
As we were discussing our plans, barely a mile outside of the town, there stood another female Kudu right beside the road! We were incredulous! But, here are the pictures.
The thin white stripes down their flanks look like white paint was dribbled
on them and ran down. Camouflage, I guess.
Sam dropped us off at the Sprayview where we cleaned up and changed, before calling Clifford, our eager taxi driver, to take us the mile and a half or so down the road to eat before we went to the Falls again. We had enjoyed the Spur (Tex-Mex) food so much the night before, we decided to go back there for our big meal of the day today. Clifford arrived before long and we set out. He was talkative, and answered all of our questions happily.
It turns out that he was a skilled craftsman, an electrician by training, but found that he could make more money driving a taxi in Victoria Falls when there were lots of tourists in town! Right now times were bad, he explained, mainly due to the country's political and economic problems. He told us he usually works from 7:00 AM until 11:00 PM six days a week. Try getting an American to work those hours! But he had a wife and two children, so what could he do? He told us that he figured two children were plenty; who could afford more?
We stuffed ourselves again at the Spur (for almost no money). We looked at the dessert menu and were tempted by the brownies and ice cream listed, but there was no way we could have held any more at that point. Then Carol suggested that since it was already late in the day, we surely wouldn't want another big meal in the evening. But, maybe we could come back to the Spur and have our dessert then! That sounded like a plan to the rest of us, so it was decided.
To work off some of that food we walked the half-mile or so to the entrance to the Victoria Falls Park. The sign said that the entrance fee was 1,080 Zim dollars, or $20 US. Basically, they were offering to accept US money at close to the official 55-1 exchange rate. Since we had changed our money at 100-1, we paid our fee in Zim dollars (as we called them), and got in for about half of what it would have cost us. Interestingly, right across the street was a money exchange office with a sign offering 80-1. Given that, we couldn't believe that anybody would actually pay $20 US.
We walked in and followed the paved paths along the side of and then right in front of the falls. The picture below was taken from the airplane the day before, but I've included it for reference. We were walking around the left end and along the land in the bottom of the picture.
The sun was still well up in the sky, but was heading for the Western horizon behind us as it was between 4:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon. We had purposely waited until this late in the day so it would be a little cooler, but an added benefit was that the angle of the sun produced some spectacular rainbows in the spray. See for yourself.
Looking down the gorge from one end of the mile-long falls.
We called this a chute or flume at the very end of the falls. Check the reference
photo above, left end.
We decided this looked like a foggy seaside cliff. At right, still another
bright rainbow.
We actually caught a bit of a double rainbow in this one.
We just couldn't stop taking rainbow pictures.
After getting soaked on the Zambian side the day before, this time I had come with umbrella, rain suit, and plastic bags to protect the camera equipment, my wallet, and anything else the water might damage. I had worn the jacket a few times before when it was cool, but this was the only time the whole trip I wore the entire Gore-tex rain suit we had bought in the states for so much money!
Some WHERE under the rainbow… I wish you could hear the roar.
Not much visible spray here, but LOTS of water going over.
Our last falls picture. Enjoy it! We sure did!
Having walked all the way the footpath allowed, I peeled off the hot rain suit, shook the water off, and folded it back up inside a backpack. Still using our little umbrellas occasionally for protection from some wind-blown spray that tried to surprise us, we meandered back to the park entrance and started walking back toward town. We wanted to check out the open air market for some animal carvings and other items, so started in that direction. We soon found it without much difficulty, but discovered that many of the merchants closed up at 5:00. It was getting on towards dusk and nobody there had electric lights, so we were very limited in what we could shop for this evening.
We were about the only non-African people in sight, so we were descended upon by anxious sellers as soon as we approached the market. Carol decided she was in no mood to be pestered or pressured, so declared that she was going to simply stand near the entrance and wait for the rest of us. While she stood there, several of the locals did approach her wanting her to look at their wares, but she told them firmly that she was not interested in anything now, but that she might come back tomorrow. If they pestered her now, she would not buy anything from them tomorrow! That worked - they pretty much left her alone.
One enterprising young man politely asked her if, when she came back tomorrow, she would please come first to HIS stall, number three. She said she would, and he repeated it a number of times until she assured him that yes, she would come to number THREE!
I was anxious to find a carving of a warthog, since Carol had really liked them and thought they were such cute, ugly animals. I found one that was not bad and began to bargain for it. The starting price was $10. I already knew that Les had bought a similar sized (small) hippo for $1, so offered $2. The price then went to $8. I looked in my wallet and was horrified to realize I hadn't brought any $1 bills (I had plenty hidden in my suitcase back at the hotel) and had nothing smaller than a $5. Of course, getting change was impossible, so I settled for $5 if they would include some little wooden spoons with giraffe or elephant heads carved at the end of the handle. I had hoped to find a warthog with its tail erect, like they do when they run, but didn't see any. Later Les found some and I bought one of those as well.
The shops were all closing, so we told the merchants we would come back tomorrow, and left with our little purchases. By now it was almost dark, and we were not far from the Spur restaurant, so we decided it was time for dessert! Once we were seated at our table and looked at the menus, we decided that dessert alone might not be enough, so we ordered a small plate of quesadillas to go with our brownies and ice cream! Once the brownies arrived we realized we had made a mistake in ordering one apiece. They were huge - we could have easily split one between two of us.
While still at the table, Les and I checked out our supply of Zim dollars and realized that we might need some more to pay for our food and the taxi back to the hotel. So we found a telephone and called Clifford! He came immediately, and said he'd be glad to get $20 US exchanged for Zimbabwe dollars. He couldn't do it himself, but he knew where he could get it done. We trusted him at this point, so gave him $20 and he drove off. Within a few minutes he was back with 2000 Zim dollars. We paid for dinner and let Clifford drive us back to the Sprayview.
In reviewing the day, we listed the following sightings from our morning game drive: elephant dung, jackal droppings, hyena tracks (well, I told you the grass was high and we couldn't see many animals!) zebras, impala, a terrapin, warthogs, cape buffalo, sable antelope, giraffes, lilac-breasted roller, coucal, hammerkop, a goshawk with a snake in its beak, probably 1,000 vultures, and kudu. Not bad!
(One more installment: our trip to the market and flight home.)