May 24, 2015

We have spent this weekend at Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwe side of the Zambezi River.  The falls were absolutely beautiful!  Having also been to Niagara Falls, it’s still tough to compare the two.  Victoria Falls seems much bigger because of the way that the falls are in between the walls of the canyon.  It makes it seem much longer/taller than the horseshow shape of Niagara Falls.  We did learn that Victoria Falls is the tallest falls in the world at 107 meters in the tallest point.  It is the second widest falls in the world (second to Iguacu Falls), and the third highest annual volume (Niagara is first).  Although, we were here at high season, so right now the daily water flow is higher than Niagara.  In fact, in April/May, the annual water usage of New York City flows over Victoria Falls in only 3.5 days!  There was a great viewing walkway around the park with 16 different view points.  Since it is high season, a few of the view points where just mist (well, not really mist, more like a hurricane), but the 10 or so that we could see through were beautiful!

While we were in Victoria Falls, we also went to dinner at a local African restaurant (called Indabelly…lol) and Hayden got to go up with the locals and dance for everyone.  He was loving the attention…he’s become quite an extrovert on this trip!  It was our last night with our first crew, so we all went to dinner together.  For the second half of the trip, we switch to a crew that is based out of Kenya.  We have really enjoyed this group, so hopefully the next group will be just a good!  (We have the same three other girls with us, but we will add additional people for the next three weeks.)

On the last day, we went to the local market where Hayden got a Nyami Nyami (local good luck necklace) and we also got to touch a crocodile!  Our tour leader taught Hayden an African version of “If You’re Happy and You Know It” which is “If you’re happy and you know it, kiss a croc”, so he kissed the croc for Manda.  LOL  🙂

Most of the time here we just relaxed and walked around.  We did make our way down to the Big Tree, which is a HUGE Baobab tree.  These trees are really cool because they look like they are upside down.  The leaves only grow part of the year and they can be very old.  This tree is estimated at about 1,500 years old!  There was a local guy there who was selling souvenirs and we started talking to him about the tree, he found a piece of the fruit for us and opened it up so that we could try it.  This is actually what they use to make Cream of Tartar.

Tomorrow we will be going back to Chobe National Park in Botswana again for another night in the bush.  We are looking forward to it so that we can see some big cats!