There are many ways to experience Victoria Falls, the world-famous waterfall marking the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. You could take a cruise down the Zambezi river, which is filled with wallowing hippos, bungee-jump into the canyon, or take a helicopter flight above this world heritage site, which was “discovered” in 1855 by an Scottish explorer, David Livingstone, and named for England’s queen at the time.
But one of the best ways to experience Vic Falls is by jumping right in, which you can do by taking a plunge into the “Devil’s Pool,” where a guide grabs your ankles as you peer over the 350-foot waterfall. I probably wouldn’t have done this if I knew beforehand exactly what was involved, but it did prove to be a memorable — if slightly terrifying — way to experience this natural world wonder!
Unfortunately, our trip to Victoria Falls — which locals knew as Mosi-oa-Tunya, or “the smoke that thunders,” long before Livingstone arrived — was also bittersweet for being the last stop for many people on our tour. This made everything we did together a little more poignant, starting with a sunset cruise down the Zambezi river to peeking over the falls at “Devil’s Pool” to cheering on fellow travelers as they bungee-jumped into the canyon.
After three nights camping at Vic Falls, we re-boarded our truck for the next portion of our journey, which would take us through Zimbabwe and into Malawi, Tanzania, and Zanzibar with a fresh mix of travelers on board. On our way out of town, we stopped by Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust — a local non-profit that rescues and rehabilitates injured wildlife while working with tribal leaders and rural communities to promote conservation — where we met some of the injured animals this hardworking NGO has nursed back to health.
From here, we drove to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city, to go walking with white rhinos in the nearby Matobo National Park. Tom and I already saw many rhinos in Etosha National Park in Namibia, but those were black rhinos, which are smaller and more solitary than white rhinos (which actually aren’t “white,” as their name suggests, but named for their “wide” upper lip that was initially mistranslated into English from Afrikaans). White rhinos are also larger, calmer, and more tolerant of people — partly because they have terrible eyesight. This allowed us to walk right up to a crash of four rhinos relaxing under a tree in the park, whose approximately 60 rhinos are protected with armed guards with instructions to shoot poachers on site.
These rhinos cocked their ears as they heard us taking photos, but they didn’t seem overly bothered, only moving to fart or better position themselves in shade. “Just be a good houseguest,” said our guide, explaining how white rhinos generally tolerate people long as they maintain a respectful distance, avoid bright colors and patterns, and keep their voices low. We also turned off the GPS tracking on our phones, which can be easily tracked by poachers, whose relentless quest for rhino horn has pushed both rhino species to the brink of extinction.
After leaving these rhinos to nap in peace, our group climbed the park’s granite boulders to marvel at cave paintings made by the San people, or native bushmen, who painted images of animals and people to communicate with their fellow tribesman. We observed similar paintings in Namibia, but these paintings were even more elaborate and better preserved, which is truly impressive considering that they’re also thousands of years old. As the sun set over Zimbabwe’s largest national park, Tom and I sipped beers with travelers we met from a different bus while part of our group chose to visit gravesite of Cecil Rhodes, the infamous colonist who founded Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was known before independence.
On the following day, we drove to Masvingo, a Zimbabwean town nearby the sprawling ruins of Great Zimbabwe, a medieval trading city founded in the 11th century. The vast stone complex— whose soaring towers and walls are still standing centuries later, despite being built entirely without mortar — is famed both for its complex engineering and by countering the notion that Africa wasn’t “civilized” until the 15th century, when the first Portuguese began to arrive. Nobody knows exactly why Great Zimbabwe was finally abandoned, but these sprawling ruins — the largest of their kind in sub-saharan Africa — prove parts of the continent were thriving long before Europeans landed.
Our final stop in Zimbabwe was in Harare, which was known formerly Salisbury back when Zimbabwe was part of Rhodesia. At first, I thought it was strange we were only spending a just a few hours in Zimbabwe’s capital city, at least until we arrived in Harare, with its crumbling buildings, garbage-strewn streets, and — in a country with 96 percent unemployment — huge crowds of people milling around with nothing to do.
Tom and I tried to kill time at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, which is filled with paintings and sculpture by talented artists using contemporary art to protest their country’s downward spiral, which includes sprawling poverty, corruption, and inflation so high the local currency has tanked, forcing the country to trade in American dollars. “Everyone’s complaining about inflation in England,” joked one Zimbabwean guide, noting that 10 percent inflation in Zimbabwe — where 100 to 200 is far more common — would be a huge improvement. Now the country’s old trillion dollar notes — decommissioned and worthless — are being sold in the streets as a tourist souvenir.
Sadly, it’s hard to see how Zimbabwe — which suffered for 30 years at the hands of independence leader-turned-dictator Robert Mugabe — can recover from its current plight, especially because the new president is apparently even worse. “At least we knew what to expect with Mugabe,” one Zimbabwean told us, explaining how the new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has taking Mugabe’s signature corruption, violence, greed, and suppression of all dissent to the next level. Case in point: as Zimbabwe gears up for presidential elections in 2023, opposition leaders have apparently already begun to disappear — another Mugabe trademark and a foreboding sign for Zimbabwe’s embattled democracy. “Sometimes,” this person said, “it’s better the devil you know.”
By Jen Swanson