An entry in the TFS Travel Journal
A nice sleep-in morning. We enjoyed their quite good breakfast buffet in the large open-air dining room with the panoramic view of the trees and the busy watering hole (only guinea fowl, impalas, and baboons stopped by while we were watching).
We then took the minibus into town and walked to VF Nat’l Park. We walked along the concrete pathway through the trees with the roar of the Falls just beyond. Then we came upon them: a 300-foot high, miles-long curtain of waterfall across a relatively narrow chasm. Confronted with such grandeur of nature, all we could do was to think of the words of a friend of ours in a similar situation — “I have to go to the bathroom”. Instead, we walked along the path which runs along the viewing side of the chasm. The spray from the Falls is so strong that it has created its own narrow tropical belt stretching along the edge, and in many places it was actually raining, though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky! We looked at, and listened to, the Falls for a while, then the path ended at a point where we could watch the bungee jumpers off of the large and magnificent 1905 steel arched bridge. Despite its being the highest bungee jump in the world, we weren’t tempted.
We had had enough of that tropical sauna, so we walked to the Victoria Falls hotel so that Milton could see the famous landmark. A walk-through was sufficient, so we strolled over to the crafts market, where we saw a mind-numbing array of African style creations ranging from the crappiest to the classiest, and were besieged by an equally mind-numbing amount of “proprietors” trying to get us to buy from them. We passed on the seemingly life-sized giraffes and the tribal weaponry, but picked up a few small tokens for our various shelves back home.
Wendy then went back to the hotel, while Milton went into the VF snake display. And what a cool display it was! All the most poisonous African varieties — mambas, tree snakes (the most fatal, for which there’s no known antidote) pythons (constrictors, not venomous) and adders, which were actually the most beautifully patterned. As there was no one else there, the snake-keeper was quite talkative, which was fortunate as there was no printed material available. One of their pythons was over 20 feet long (they can grow to over 25 feet and live to over 50); the snakes are fed every 21 days (though most can go up to 3 months without eating), but in some cases (the python, for example) one feeding may consist of several rabbits or chamelions; death after a bite can be as quick as 45 seconds; the process of shedding involves about 8 days of basically sleeping, after which they slough off the old skin in about 15 minutes.
Back at the hotel, we ironed out some details with Mashado - our Tanzanian safari operator - then went next door to the Boma restaurant. We dined outdoors near their pool, on a table set with a nice local patterned tablecloth. Though the service was bizarrely slow (as we were the only ones there!), the food was excellent. The Greek salads were good, but the ostrich kebabs (which tasted a lot like beef, but very flavorful) and spicy stir-fry curry chicken were perfect. We also had a Castle Pilsner, which was quite good. Then back to our room (with a stop to pick up another Milo Bar dessert) for the evening, since it’s going to be yet another early morning.
The room is worth mention: African motifs and colors, with thick wood beams and bamboo-like ceilings, mosquito netting over the beds, terra-cotta tile floor in the bedroom, blue and white tiled bathroom, and arty wrought-iron iguanas on the wooden mirror frame and headboards.