Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe was quite a strange place to visit – like a modern town that had suddenly vanished, leaving the empty shells of shopfronts, tiled pavements and streetside statues as a bleak reminder of what it had once been.
And ‘once’ must not have been that long ago – menus were still full of choices that weren’t available, shopkeepers still trying to stay in business – but their friendly greetings and apologies were full of the knowledge that they couldn’t help us with their empty shelves and bare coathangers, as much as we wanted to help them.
It was quite sad, and real, and there was hope that an upcoming election may change things, but most likely not. We ate at the hotel I was staying in post-tour, and had drinks down at the backpacker hostel, who could both afford to import food and drinks, though when walking at night we had to keep an eye out for wild elephants, apparently. I didn’t quite believe our tour leader when he said this, but considering both my close encounters with elephants on this trip have been terrifying, I thought best to lean toward caution.
The night after our tour officially ended, we made our way down to the river for a restaurant buffet meal and a performance of African music and dancing, which was beautiful, and relaxed with some wine (at $1.50 a bottle. A bottle. I thought it important enough to mention) before someone exclaimed that a hippo had made it’s way onto the lawn of the hotel and was munching away at the grass, minding it’s own business. It was huge, massive, and was apparently a regular visitor to the restaurant. We all mumbled about having had to pay money for the past month on cruises and hippo walks where we barely saw the animals, and here was a full-grown hippo out of the water, at the place we were spending $8 on dinner. Also, after seeing two buffalo in the Masai Mara, worthy of a dozen shots, we ran into a whole herd on the road back to our hotel. Typical.
I had a week in Zimbabwe after the tour ended, luckily with a few others that were staying a day or two longer as well, and spent my time on the internet, swimming, sunbaking and reading, until everyone else had left, and I was on my own bored senseless awaiting my flight to Cairo.
Which meant, of course, that I won Big Brother. Right?
‘Yes! You won, congratulations!’ a ‘housemate’ said to me as he left for the airport. I did always wonder what it felt like to be the last one in the house…
-Sarah
Sarah