September 20th & 21st: Victoria Falls
Made it to Victoria Falls on Thursday, most of us completely hungover from the adventures of the night before, and went out to book our activities for the day. On the agenda, we have a lion walk, an elephant ride, an adrenaline package, and an evening at the Boma. Excellent.
After making our arrangements, we went off in search of food, and for the first time were actually affected by the food shortage in Zimbabwe. We went to Wimpy’s (for the locals: Yeah, I didn’t know what this is either. It’s basically a McDonalds knockoff.) looking forward to a big juicy burger. The food we’ve been eating until now has been absolutely fantastic, thanks to our most excellent chef, Gladys. Seriously — I went to a country with a food shortage, worked my tail off, and gained 5lbs. Huh. So, we get to Wimpy’s, we’re looking at the menu, planning our delights… get up to the counter, and… “We have chicken and chips.” Um. Okay, I guess we’ll have that.
The chicken was absolutely vile. It seems awful to waste food in a place with a food shortage, but there was no meat on that damn thing. I did what I could, then gave up and chucked the rest. The chips were pretty tasty, too. Beth was able to get some coke, too. Of course, she had to empty out her water bottle first — they’ll sell you beverages, but not the containers — but hey, first coke in a month. I can understand that. (I did the same when we discovered they had diet coke the next day. woo!)
That night, we tried for our next craving: Pizza. It was recommended that we go to the Kingdom Hotel. This was seriously odd — it was like walking into Vegas. Or at least, Vegas’ concept of Zimbabwe, complete with 30 foot tall statues and slot machines, side by side. Oh my.
Bethany, Tara & I went to the restaurant that had been recommended (there are several in the place) and had a seat. They quickly brought us a menu, but then had to go over what was actually available. As it turns out… no pizza, because they had no flour. Well, darn. So, I had some sort of stir fry, the girls had some pasta, and … it was very tasty. It was also very Western. It really didn’t feel like Zimbabwe at all. I told Beth & Tara that they may as well tell people they’ve been to Vegas, because aside from half the menu being unavailable (THAT felt pretty Zimbabwean…) it was virtually identical.
Lion Walk
We woke up bright and early Friday morning to be picked up to go out to Masuwe, the African Encounter Victoria Falls lion project, and before long… we were out roaming around with a pair of 12 month old cubs, Chando & Chabalala. They were beautiful. Whenever they decided to flop down for a bit, we’d have a quick photo opportunity. Turns out, lions are bloody lazy. Of course, so would you if you had to wander around 30 degree heat in a big thick coat like theirs… but, they’d stop every few minutes and flop down, so we were able to get lots of great pictures with these amazing cats.
They really are just … overgrown kittens, except when these kittens chew on you, you need a hospital. To encourage them to go the way we wanted them to, one of the guides had a stick with a bundle of straw tied to a string — almost exactly the same as the yarn pom pom on a stick I made for Liam. He’d bounce it in front of one of the lions noses and convince them to chase it… or at least swipe at it. Terribly cute.
On the way back, the first two went back to the compound, and we met up with the two younger cubs, Lina & Lungile.
They were absolutely sweet. Being a bit younger (8 months old) they were even more playful, and a little less predictable. After having gotten used to the older two who you could get pretty close to without any fear, Lina (the female) was a bit more intimidating. At one point, a woman got a little too close to her and got a claw to the backside, and another woman nearly got pounced on when Lina was up on a tree. She was adorable, though… especially when she played with her less aggressive brother. The “overgrown kitten” analogy fits here just as well.
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Elephant Ride
We had an afternoon of shoppping in town (the power was out, so we couldn’t get to an internet cafe — curses!), then were picked up for our trip out of town to go for a ride on an elephant.
I’ve actually done this once before … I think I was about seven, and my cousin Brian took me to the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE). (That set of cousins are closer to my mothers age than mine.) They had an elephant, and voila — an elephant ride.
I don’t remember very much about it… just that I was warned not to touch the elephants ears. Evidently that was specific to that elephant, as Jock, my ride today, had no such issues. It was an absolute blast.
The elephant ride we went with is quite far out of town, as it took about an hour to get there. Given that Miombo is two hours away (and practically a different world) we definitely weren’t near civilization. The elephants actually have a bit of free reign — during their exercise periods, they’re welcome to leave if they want. One of their elephants has been known to take off for up to 4 months at a time during the rainy season. Then when it gets dry, he comes back… and during their training sessions, hasn’t forgotten a thing. Turns out, that elephants never forget thing has some merit.
This particular organization is pretty good for other reasons as well — they’re an elephant orphanage of sorts. Baby elephants generally don’t survive without their parents. But, they’ve come up with a pseudo-elephant feed for baby elephants and have done a pretty good job. They had one orphan there at the time, Cheezy. At eight months old, she was the same age as the other (non-orphan) baby Tambi, but considerably smaller. They have round the clock care for her, right down to someone sleeping in her pen with her, as without constant companionship, she’d simply die.
She was FAR too cute for that to happen, so I’m glad they do that.
We had a fantastic time, and spent a good portion of it laughing at the silly elephant antics… from Tambi untying one of the guides shoes, to Cheezy attempting to steal our cameras out of the guides pocket… I had quite a chuckle every time Jock would put his trunk above his head, asking for a treat.
At the end of the ride, we got to give them some Elephant Pellets. God knows what was in them, but they sure enjoyed them. The instructions were basically… fill your hands up with these pellets (about the size of … well, slightly smaller than marshmallows) and dump them into the waiting trunks. The elephants knew what was coming so they’d tip their trunks upwards to await their treats. Except Jock, my elephant. He’s virtually a vacuum cleaner, so all I had to do was hold them out and he’d suction them right up. And vacuum cleaner he was. I’m pretty sure my actual vacuum doesn’t have suction like that. We giggled madly the whole way along.
