It’s Raining, It’s Pouring

The nice thing about visiting Chobe is that it is only ten miles to the Zimbabwean border which is close to Victoria Falls.  Once you cross the border you still have to drive about an hour to Vic Falls, but it is an easy day trip.  Since Amanda and Ashleigh are both on their first visit (of many I expect) to Africa, I had to take them to see the Falls.  Plus, being so close it would have been a real shame to skip it.  So we woke up early one morning, drove to the border, proceeded to Vic Falls, and then got soaked.  Actually let me back up a minute…

While at the Zim border, Ashleigh and Amanda were introduced to the true chaos of Africa.  Essentially there were a ton of people, each one jostling for a place in line, shoving one another and trying to get the attention of the border patrol officers in order to get through as quickly as possible.  I actually felt a little bad because I am accustomed to this kind of behavior, but my friends aren’t.  After I was processed I turned around to see them politely waiting their turn, so I grabbed Ashleigh and practically threw her through the visa window in an effort to make sure the immigration officer helped her before someone line jumped her.  Fortunately we made it out in one piece with the girls laughing to one another saying, “So and so could never come to Africa, she couldn’t handle that kind of stress.”  That is right; Africa isn’t for the faint of heart.

We made it to Victoria Falls around 9am.  As we were headed toward the Falls we saw some baboons in a car.  You may have read a while back that there was some concern over the monkeys on campus learning how to drive.  Well, it appears the baboons may have beaten them to it.  In all reality, the baboons were not driving the car; they were making out (and doing a little bit more) in the backseat.  I’m glad that wasn’t my car:

Dr. David Livingstone, my namesake, is believed to have been the first European to have seen the falls back in 1855.  If you want more information about Victoria Falls you can check out my previous blog post about it here.  I had never been to the Zambian side of the Falls before, so that was the side we decided to explore.  As we drove into the town of Victoria Falls we could see the spray from the Falls.  Then as we were crossing the bridge from Zimbabwe to Zambia we began to feel the spray.  Any time you cross the bridge lots of people approach you asking you if you want to bungee jump.  We did not partake, but here is a picture of the bridge, with a rainbow due to the spray, and a bungee jumper (he is in an orange shirt directly above the rainbow):

It wasn’t until we got a little closer that we REALLY felt the force of the Falls.  In fact most of our pictures didn’t turn out properly because the mist was so extreme it looked as if we were standing in the middle of a fog storm.  But here is one shot of the Falls that did turn out well:

We also made lots of friends because everyone wanted to get their pictures taken with us:

We spent about two hours visiting the park and ultimately ended up looking like drowned rats, but we loved every last WET minute of it: