To Victoria Falls

My lame excuse for not writing for more than a month is that I took a week to visit Victoria Falls and have been recuperating for the last 2+ weeks. Here is our story…

The dude I met in Swaziland and I headed North from Venda to the Zimbabwe border crossing. Unfortunately, we were denied entry because JSpitty didn’t have his vehicle registration documents. Undeterred, we headed West to the nearest border crossing in to Botswana. This border crossing was much smaller, which we understood to mean more lax about documentation. The road through the no-mans land descended through some woods and then... the woods cleared and we found ourselves on the banks of the Limpopo River. Convinced there must be some mistake, JSpitty reversed to ask the South African officials whether we had taken the right road. His question was met with “where’s your sense of adventure?”

The Limpopo River is not a stream, not even in dry season. It’s big and important enough to be used as the name of the South African province bordering it to the South, the Limpopo province – where I live. Our journey took place early into the dry season so the waters were still waist high. This particular crossing does not receive many customers and cars often fail the crossing.

With the South African border officials watching from the South Africa, we put up the windows and drove through the Limpopo. The water washed up over the hood of the car and onto the window. If Jasper had stopped the car at any point, the engine would have flooded and we would have gotten stuck. But we made it, the only casualty being the front license plate which the river washed away.



On the Botswana side, we found ourselves in a national park, driving along a dirt road past elephants and giraffes. Two interesting features about highways in Botswana:
• They are populated by a bizarre species of donkey that stands in the middle of the road, doing nothing. Most creatures, even if they’re completely still, you get the sense they’re doing something – at least waiting, or maybe thinking about something. Not these donkeys. They’re not even concerned about the cars heading straight at them – don’t even flinch. Upon my return, I’ve checked out South African donkeys and they’re not the same. The only logical explanation is that there’s some donkey cult whose followers believe that enlightenment can be achieved only by zoning out on the highways of Botswana.
• There are regular checkpoints you have to drive through to make sure your car’s tires and your shoes aren’t carrying foot and mouth disease. But… there isn’t actually an outbreak occurring anywhere nearby.



We drove up through the salt flats in Botswana and spent the night at a cool little hostel with a beer-bottle chandelier and cowskin-upholstered furniture. The area was really beautiful and barren, with a proliferation of baobab trees. We were hoping to see the Sowa Pan, located in the Southwest-most corner of some salt flat national park. Equipped with a compass with which Steve outfitted me after my last navigational debacle, we steadily drove Southwest for about two hours until it became clear that any further and the return trip would be made impossible due to lack of petrol. So we didn't get to see the pan. But after having turned back, it seemed the scenery wasn't the same as that which we saw coming in. I consulted the compass and - Southwest! The location of the sun gave us an indication that that wasn't altogether true and in fact, it seems the compass reads Southwest no matter what direction it points. Ultimately, the Earth’s electromagnetic field is less reliable than my ability to get lost. Anyway, we ended up fine, popping out onto the tar road a little bit behind where we had started to off road.

From Botswana, we successfully made the crossing into Zimbabwe (using vehicle registration documents I was in no way responsible for forging), but neglected to fill up on petrol beforehand. Needless to say, most people don’t roadtrip in Zimbabwe without carrying several canisters of petrol. The car almost puttered out twice.

We eventually made it to Victoria Falls, which we opted to see from the Zambia side. I am at a loss to describe it and Jasper’s camera sort of croaked before we got any really close up shots. Awe-some.



Coming soon: check this site for pictures. Until then, I've put some up on flickr (the "My Pictures" link to the right).