|
| December 2006 - Victoria Falls - Zimbabwe | |
| Any
trip to the southern end of Africa obviously has to include a visit to the
famous Victoria Falls.
Now Vic Falls isn't the longest waterfall in the world - but its still pretty damn amazing, the falls are roughly 1.7 km (1 mile) wide and 128 m (420 ft) high in the wet season its the largest single sheet of water in the world , over 100 metres tall, and over one mile wide - so get out your wide angle lens kids! To visit the falls you either have to enter via Livingstone in Zambia or Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe - so obviously we chose the much more exciting option of visiting one of the countries in the true Axis of Evil! |
|
| As
we found out, things in Zimbabwe are very bad, the local shoe shop only
stocks three types on shoe and inflation is running so high that they
recently knocked four zeros of their currency. But the town of Vic Falls is in
reasonably good shape (probably due to the amount of foreign currency
coming in with all the tourists), so we had a great time and met lots of
lovely folks. Of course being in such an dodgy country there is much more to tell -
including smuggling, black market money changers, door to door fuel
salesmen, but that stuff should probably be left to a night over a few
quiet beers in a pub rather than the internet!
So anyway here's Vic Falls: |
|
 |
|
Things are pretty grim in the town, here is the main street of Vic falls, not much to see apart from a lot of blokes willing to help you change money at unbelievably good rates- and the worlds dodgiest nightclub which you can just see on the right of the picture: |
|
 |
|
| Here is our bungalow in the beautiful Victoria Falls Backpackers if you can find better accommodation for £7 per person per night - we'd like to hear about it! | |
 |
|
| Obviously one of the main attractions for Cath was Osama the piglet (yet another link to the Axis of Evil I believe)! | |
 |
|
| Of course the only reason the town exists is that its a short walk to the falls - which is known in the local language as Mosi-oa-Tunya or 'the smoke that thunders' which as you can see below is pretty much bang on for a description - we didn't see much resemblance to Queen Victoria anywhere though?!?! | |
 |
|
On one side of the falls is Zambia on the other Zimbabwe - prices on the Zambia side are at the moment 1/3 more expensive than on the Zim side, but the tourists mainly go to Zam - obviously preferring the Zam to the Zim - where as we have always been a Zim - Zam kinda family! |
|
 |
|
| Its the dry season so the falls aren't falling at the fullest - but its still a pretty amazing sight! | |
 |
|
| You
can see the falls from space here, thanks to google earth:
Also here is the video we made at the falls: | .
|
| Obviously Cath was keen to get to the know the locals - this bloke was very keen to show Cath his fresh nuts: | |
 |
|
| We did an evening cruise on the Zambezi river which was quite magic - here you can see the mist from the falls rising downstream: | |
 |
|
| And here is a drunk crocodile sleeping off his hangover with his empty beer bottle by his side: | |
 |
|
| The whole time we were on the boat, we had this feeling we were being watched - now you can see why: | |
 |
|
| My what lovely brown teeth you have Mr Hippo - now you can see why hippos are the 2nd largest killer of humans in Africa (after the mosquito of course). | |
 |
|
| And here's Gregs top Africa tip - the sun is just as hot and burns just as quick in Southern Africa as it does on the back in Oz and Nz - thus its hard to tell where Gregs sunburn stops and his t-shirt starts: | |
 |
|
| That's all from Zim folks - a lovely beautiful friendly country unfortunately ruled by an evil dictator.... | |