Days 11 & Day 12 - Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe & Cape Town, South Africa - Where's Damon? & The Elephant Killers

Day 11 – Ilala Lodge, Victoria Falls

7:15am pick up for today’s single activity – white water rafting the Zambezi.  I have done my share of rafting in life - West Virginia, Alaska, Costa Rica, Montana, Tennessee, Colorado... Class IV & Class V rapids on multiple occasions; and I have had some pretty good non-voluntary swimming moments.  But rafting the Zambezi has always been the big one - not only because of the reputed Class V rapids, but also because the Zambezi is well known for hippos and crocodiles.  The possibility of getting eaten adds a new layer of motivation for staying in the raft.  All of that being said, I started the day with some trepidation.   

Our rafting group - 9 of us - met at a lookout point to learn safety tips and check out the falls/gorge from yet another amazing viewpoint before driving to the river entry point. 

I’ve been rafting enough to know the general safety tips, but we did have an added section on crocodiles and hippos as I'm guessing I'm not the only one to have concerns.  Nice.  They told us that Zambezi crocodiles are vegetarian, so we would be okay.  Ha Ha  Really, they said the crocs do not hang out in the rapids so we only had to worry about still pools, and to date, no guests have been eaten.  Good to know.  Still did not make me feel much better about swimming.  And as for hippos - they hang out in shallower water and the rafting section was too deep for them.  

When the truck dropped us off, we had been warned that there was a 750ft descent into the canyon to get to the river and we were told that it was “strenuous”, but holy hell – it was not for the faint of heart!  Again, U.S. safety standards definitely do not apply in Africa.  We hiked/climbed down the side of the canyon on a “path” that at best had huge loose rocks and at worst had rickety ladders made of odd-sized tree branches, held together with wire and protruding metal rods, while locals literally ran by us barefoot carrying everything we would need down at the bottom – including rafts, pumps, etc.  This was definitely a one slip and you were taking out everyone below you kind of hike.  There were times we lost sight of our group and had no idea where the “path” even was.  But, so long as we kept going down, we figured we’d be okay.  Interestingly, they had us all put our cameras into a dry bag before the descent, so no proof of this trek is available. 

At the bottom of the canyon, we came across 20-30 people, some kayaks, and a few rafts balancing on one big flat rock waiting to launch into the eddy of a little cove.  We hopped in our rafts – we were with an American dad/daughter duo and an Australian lady, plus our guide and two other porters training to be guides.  I think our guide may have been blind in one eye, but he never mentioned it and I didn't ask.  

Damon is very excited to get going

We did our paddling tutorial, jumped out for some photo ops and learned how to get back in the boat if we fell out (bad sign) and headed for the rapids of the mighty Zambezi. 

Clearly I'm the only one who listened to our
guide when he said "everyone out"

Eventually they all paid attention

All in all, a great day – all class 4 & 5 rapids and since the river was really high, I think we probably had it a little easier than when the river is lower.  We skipped the one class 6 rapid (thank you, as that is not commercially legal) and portaged (walked) around it while our guides took the rafts through the rapids and past the dual whirlpools.  

Hey photog - look how happy we are!

A portage in Africa is not a nice well-worn obvious path – it is climbing up, around and over rocks, clinging to the walls of rock ledges, and making your way to some point that you cannot see – all while wearing wet slippery shoes,  a life jacket and helmet and carrying a paddle.  Again, not exactly U.S. safety.  The portage seemed to be about a half a mile of this craziness and then we got back in the rafts and carried on.  

Whew - got by that one safely...

During one especially hairy rapid, I saw Damon fly by me in slow motion, land on the dad in front of me and the two of them went over.  I dove for the middle of the raft – no way was I going in.  We lost 3 people on that rapid but quickly got them back in the raft.  

Uh oh

Going 

Going

Going (those would be Damon's feet)

Still going...

aaaand... Gone.

That was our only carnage the whole day – I’ve certainly been on worse, but for as much fun as “swimming” is, those crocs are out there somewhere!  That being said, we were given the “okay” to jump out for a few tamer rapids while hanging onto the safety rope – so we did.   Crocs be damned.

We finished the rapids and left the rafts, momentarily forgetting the 750ft climb back out of the gorge.  If the way in was bad, the way out was worse.  I kept my helmet and life jacket on.  Better to have some cushion when I went down.  Again, we hand and foot climbed up stumps and rocks and tree branch ladders (while the porters ran by us barefoot carrying the gear back up).  The tour ended with a big lunch – salads, pasta and several kinds of skewered meats and vegetables and then a very long and bumpy ride back to the hotels in an open ex-military Russian truck with no shocks - guests, guides and porters all crammed in shoulder to shoulder.

Most of the way back was on dirt and gravel roads.  I thought it was an access road but eventually realized that it is a “main” road that goes through a number of small villages.  Every few hundred feet, we would see a small cluster of buildings – little round clay buildings with thatch roofs.  Most of them had some sort of garden, field or stable attached.  I’m guessing these are all extended family plots that together make up a village of some size. 

Typical structure for the area, Vic Falls mist in the background

There were no other cars on the road but we saw a number of people walking.  Where they were going, I have no idea as there was nothing that we could see anywhere.  The kids loved waiving at us as we went by.  A few of our porters, who had hitched a ride in the truck, jumped out along the way, so I’m guessing they lived somewhere in the village.

We got back to our hotel around 3pm and basically did nothing the rest of the afternoon/night except nap and go for dinner.

This beer cost $2 but had a label stating a MSRP of $1.
Hmmmm.  

We stopped for desert at a pizza place and ate a nutella pizza.  Use your imagination - it did not suck.  The restaurant also had a cool sign:

Our last night in Vic Falls :( 

We’ve gotten much better at shutting down the vendors who just swarm the second we leave our hotel property.  We tried “no thank you”, we tried ”no Ingles”, we tried ignoring them.  Eventually we just got firm and told them to stop following us and that seemed to work better.  Although one guy offered us a 1 trillion dollar bill for 1 US dollar and I was very tempted…

Day 12 - Travel Day - Zimbabwe to Cape Town, South Africa

No activity and no pictures today; however, some interesting things happened on our flights to Cape Town that give me the opportunity to discuss the topic of big game hunters and how they are viewed by the safari rangers (guides).  Warning: a little bit of soap-box here.

Our entire day was spent traveling from Victoria Falls to Cape Town for the last (sob) leg of our trip.  We had a nice relaxing morning as our airport transfer was not scheduled until 10:30 am for our 12:30 flight.  I would like to say that I slept in, but given how early we tend to rise, we are now on an early routine.  Regardless, we had a leisurely breakfast, packed, sat on our deck and enjoyed the last few minutes of Vic Falls mist and headed out.    

Sunrise Mist

Sun up Mist

It only took us a few minutes to get to the new Zimbabwe airport where we realized our flight was at 1:30 and not 12:30 – we had a lot of time to kill and not much going on in the airport.  We found the lone power outlet by our gate, near a reclined teenager, and settled in.  I went to wander the empty airport (brand new terminal, only 6 flights per day) and immediately bumped into Jon and Sydney from our rafting trip yesterday – ironically, the teenager we had settled in with at the gate was the other daughter.  We chatted until it was time to board our plane and bid a fond farewell to Victoria Falls.  The flight was rather uneventful until we landed and were walking through the airport, and I realized Damon was all agitated about something.

He explained that during our flight to Johannesburg, he had been reading email messages over the shoulder of the couple in front of us (we did not like them because one of them reclined in economy - total flying faux pas).  Having one seat back and one seat forward gave Damon a perfect view of the man's cell phone.  We knew the couple had just gotten married as we watched the woman wad her wedding dress into the overhead bin.  

Damon finally got out that he had read that the couple was on an elephant hunting safari with the two of them and both sets of parents.  The husband was writing to the safari company complaining that he had just spent over $30,000 on their elephant murdering, sorry, "hunting" safari and they had never killed an elephant and he was very disappointed.  He went on to rant about the quality of the food and vehicles they had and reminded the company that he had already spent over $100,000 with them in the past successfully murdering, sorry "hunting" other big game.  Now we understand that there are people who get a thrill from hunting, and to a certain extent, I can understand when the meat is used for food, but to me, hunting elephants or lions or any of the big game out here is just appalling - basically you hunt it, kill it, take a picture with it, and leave it to rot.  There is no viable use for elephant IF one could even figure out how to haul a 6,000 lb animal out of the bush.  And before you mention it, yes, it is illegal to take the tusks.

So how do the safari rangers/guides feel about big game hunting?  Well, while we were on our safari, I had brought the topic up to Dawie to get his take on it.  Given our experiences with big game, I said that I didn’t think hunting was all that sporting since the animals are often hanging out or sleeping near the roads.  Doesn't seem exciting to shoot a sleeping lion on the side of the road.  Dawie said that it was different where hunting takes place since the animals are not used to vehicles and generally are much harder to find.  Okay, so at least they have some fighting chance...

I assumed Dawie would be completely opposed to the concept of hunting but was somewhat surprised to hear what he had to say and it may have moved my opinion a miniscule notch.  So here goes - every year, animal conservationists measure animal populations, food and water supplies, etc. and can predict the number of animals that are acceptable losses.  To a certain extent, they determine acceptable losses based on predictions of the natural predation that is likely to take place given populations.  For example, if there are too many lions and not enough territory, male lions will kill each other to take over territories and then they will kill all of the losing lion's offspring.  The theory goes that since those animals will likely be killed naturally, a license to hunt them does not significantly alter nature.

The government will determine acceptable losses by species and then auction off hunting licenses for upwards of $10,000 each.  That money is all used for keeping the remaining animals safe with the fencing, anti-poaching teams, etc.  So while big game hunting is generally abhorrent to me, Dawie at least helped us to understand that there is some benefit to the greater good.  That being said, he did tell us that there are still a number of unscrupulous game hunters who will breed animals just for the purpose of hunting to avoid the rules &/or they will re-sell the licenses for 10x profit to people like those on our flight.

Back to the would-be elephant killers... we spent a few hours in the Johannesburg airport before heading to our gate, and wouldn’t you know it, they were on our flight to Cape Town.  But it gets better.  Damon and I both took aisle seats, so on a flight with several hundred people,  I had the couple sitting in the two seats next to me.  They chatted with me for a few minutes before settling in and I tried to be pleasant.  The man took out his phone and I could not resist the urge to continue reading their story - I mean the phone was huge and the font was huge - and I was able to see a message that came in from a friend of his bragging that he had taken down “2 elly” with “shots to the brain”.  No matter what Dawie thinks, I still have a hard time understanding how people can shoot an elephant and then just leave it there to rot or be eaten.  I’ll get off my moral high horse now.

We landed, got through immigration and made our way to our latest accommodations at the Waterfront Village apartments in Cape Town.  Our apartment, in a vacation resort, was a full 2 bedroom, 3 bathroom spread with a den, living-room, full kitchen and a glorious washing machine and dryer.  It also had a deck that wrapped around giving us views in three directions including the very majestic Table Mountain.  We found out later that our deck even had a small pool on it! 

We walked to the Waterfront area which is loaded with restaurants and a big indoor shopping mall plus a giant Ferris wheel.  We had a quick bite and headed home to sleep.