ZIM OR ZAM?

The long overland journey has finally ended.  We made it over the border and  to our last destination – Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. 

One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, Victoria Falls  are fed by the Zambezi River which, after falling over the largest waterfall drop in the world, eventually empties into the Indian Ocean.

Last year we visited the Falls, which straddle both Zimbabwe and Zambia.  The big debate is where the view is better – Zim or Zam?   I can say that each viewpoint has its advantages, although the spray is so strong that we were sopping wet, through to our underwear, in both countries.     I wrote last year about our departure from the Zimbabwe airport.   Robert Mugabe, one of the world’s worst despots, turned what was formerly known as Rhodesia, into one of Africa’s worst basket cases of dysfunction and poverty, and created hyperinflation that exceeded one million per cent.  He has robbed the mineral-rich country blind and has socked away BILLIONS in private foreign bank accounts.   The country recently stopped printing trillion dollar notes and switched to the US dollar as its official currency.    The difference the changeover has made in just a year is stark.  Whereas last year the airport was dismally and barely lit and had nothing – absolutely nothing – no food, no drink, nothing in the shops - this year the tiny terminal was bursting with tourists and nourishment was plentiful, as we waited patiently to check in for our flight to Johannesburg.   And, the electricity worked!


Johannesburg is enormous, sprawling over a huge geographic area.   We rented a car in this left -side driving country.   Not a great idea.  Yosy lost his license (er, "misplaced" it . . . somewhere in the world), so I had to handle the LIE-rush-hour-type traffic from the airport to the hotel with the manual drive rental.   Not only is driving on the left, so is the stick gear, as well as the blinkers and the windshield washers - all is reversed.   Yosy was screaming at me the whole way, to "shut off the window shield washers," and to stop hugging the left curb.   It wasn't fun

But back in Zim, we had high tea at the gorgeous Victoria Falls Hotel, housed in a 1904 colonial building that sits high on a hill overlooking the narrow gorge and the Falls. The Hotel was the setting for the movie The African Queen, with Bogie & Bacall.   For dinner we tried smoked crocodile appetizer and medium-rare warthog.   I can highly recommend both.

While Jozi is not as stunningly beautiful as Cape Town (in fact, its not pretty at all), there seems to be a much greater mixing of the races here.   With a thriving black middle class, blacks are patrons and not just the employees of the shops and restaurants.  This city is bustling and very alive.   It feels more cosmopolitan and sophisticated. 

We spent hours yesterday at the incredible Apartheid Museum, which I can write pages  about, but will spare you, since we are about to leave for an (escorted) bike tour through Soweto, the largest black township in the country.   No Township in the world has as much historical and politcal resonance as Soweto.  Created in 1904 to move non-whites out of the city but close enough to provide workers, it is the birthplace of the uprising against apartheid and former home of two Nobel Prize winners (Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu).   

Tomorrow we fly home.