Victoria Falls : Mosi-O-Tunya!

RANEE'S SOUTH AFRICA DIARIES: JOURNAL 6
May 22

Breakfast is buffet and quite basic—cereal, squash, toast, eggs, baked beans and bacon.

At 8.30, Paul is back with his white van, ready to escort and guide us to the Mosi-O-Tunya—The Smoke that Thunders—and there could be no name more appropriate!

We wear the same kind of disposable raincoats that we had been given at the Niagra Falls, only these are much-used and come from Paul’s van. We are warned that we’d get soaked to our thighs. Paul rolls up his trouser legs to his knees and changes into flip-flops. We trudge along in our sneakers.

Our first sight of the eastern cataract on the walk—a little look at the corner of the falls with a brilliant rainbow emanating from it and dancing skywards in the spray—already has us gasping. Then we walk away from the falls to look at the Zambezi in its last restless vastness, skipping over rocks in its way before it takes the plunge. Here there is a double rainbow and we get a tiny glimpse of the immense width of the river—and the imminent falls. Then on we walk again, this time up and down, winding to viewpoints that show us tantalizing bits of the colossal falls, piece by piece, hidden in a shroud of ever-changing spray.



We can never see into the gorge. A solid-seeming, gigantic white wall of water hits with such force that the spray obscures almost the entire ravine. As it moves up the canyon, the stiff breeze makes the spray rise into the sky—so high we can see the falls reversed!



Here, at eye level, the thick spray thins a bit and begins to dance—sometimes mist, sometimes dense fog, sometimes in rainbow colours but always there –ever-shifting, restive, agitated, impatient. It is extremely difficult to reconcile this constant shape-changing spray in perpetual movement with the still smoke we see from the hotel’s jetty.

The power, the energy, the stretch and the rumbling, resounding expanse of the Mosi-O-Tunya can never be imagined until you’ve stood there, facing it, feeling ant-like in strength, size and importance. You have to hear the echoing, bellowing, gushing roar; you have to feel the sting of the misty spray on your cold skin, you have to smell the vapour, taste the force that turns a river of water into cloud. Only with all your senses engaged can you even begin to grasp the enormity of the phenomenon before you.


This event that Nature throws up around an innocuous corner so carelessly is perhaps the most awe-inspiring wonder I have seen so far in our world.

After the falls—I cannot comprehend why anybody, however patriotic, would name this marvel in the name of his queen, when the natives have such an appropriate name for it already—we are all quietly pondering. The experience has not penetrated our skins yet. We have not yet absorbed the totality of what we have seen, smelt, tasted, felt and heard. It hasn’t quite sunk in. When it does “hit us,” we know it will be a whammy!


But now is not the time to wallow in what we have seen. There’s a craft market just outside the gates of the falls that lures us. The kids have been out with Paul for a while already as we make our way back slowly savouring the falls again on our way out. They have made contact with young Charles and seen his wares. We walk the entire market, “negotiating” prices and finally buy some trays that seem lacquered but are actually buffed with tan shoe polish from Philip’s stall and a stone hippo soap-dish and “tom-tom” from Charles, the kids’ newfound friend.

We like a lot of the carvings, but they are either too tall or too heavy for us to carry. And we figure that we have enough time and area to cover in the next few weeks so there’ll be enough opportunities to buy things we like as we go along. The damage at the crafts market is 150000 Kwacha at Philip’s and 25000 Kwacha at Charles’—175000 Kwacha equals a princely total of about $44 or 2000 Rupees.

These Zambians sure know how to be hospitable. On our way back, Paul offers us ice-cold coca colas and water from the cooler in his van. We are back at the Zambezi Waterfront by 11am.

The rest of the day is relaxed. There is no where else to go and we can’t walk out of the gated, armed-guarded hotel premises so we eat and rest and I write and put the photos and videos into the laptop, charge depleted batteries and just generally chill.

In the evening, we leave the kids in the room as we explore the hotel grounds and have a couple of before-dinner whiskeys at the bar at about 10000 Kwacha per 30 ml.