Madikwe Game Reserve & Tau Game Lodge   Madikwe Game Reserve was founded as a private park in 1991 and is South Africa’s fourth largest. I understand that some 90% of the animals located there were brought in, that is, rescued from elsewhere, and have now thrived, and their populations have multiplied. Madikwe has the second largest elephant population in South Africa.

When researching game visits, one comes across the term Big Five, which refers to lion, elephant, leopard, rhino, buffalo. The term is so well engrained that I’ve seen local wood carvings with pictures of these five animals. Madikwe likes to advertise that it has the Magnificent Seven, which is the Big Five plus the cheetah and wild dog. I find both terms to be nonsense. Why check off animals based on someone else’s list? There are a couple of animals just mentioned that I don’t care particularly about, but I would very much like to see a giraffe, and, if water is available, a hippopotamus. To paraphrase the motto “Know thyself”, I’ll say “Know the animals THOU wishest to see”, as opposed to what someone else suggests that you see.

Tau (rhymes with “how”) Game Lodge opened in 1995, only four years after Madikwe Game Reserve did. As I understand it, there were fewer size restrictions at the time, which is why Tau is larger than the others, most of which might accommodate perhaps a dozen guests or so. As mentioned earlier, Tau took 56 of the 70 of us. (I heard later that those that went elsewhere were also quite pleased.) There are many game lodges in Madikwe, and guests like to return again and again. I was surprised to find out that some of them are time shares, so that both locals and outsiders, can visit repeatedly. I’m sure some of these are corporate, for companies who wish to entertain clients.

Madikwe lies in South Africa, and its perimeter fence is only about a kilometer from the border with Botswana. Coming west from Pretoria, we got off the train at the town of Zeerust (which had the look of a US town in the Old West). The empty train then continued west to Mafikeng, then north into Botswana, to its capital of Gabarone, which I’d overflown on my arrival. Meanwhile, buses took us instead north up the perimeter fence of Madikwe to Tau gate. After two nights at Tau (we had packed small overnight bags), we then went west on buses to cross into Botswana and meet the train at Gabarone. But let’s talk about Tau first.

Getting off the buses at Tau Gate, we still had a 3-4 minute ride to the lodge, which the buses weren’t allowed to approach, so we all clambered into game vehicles for the short hop. I suppose it’s appropriate to describe these vehicles at this point, at least as they were at Tau, since they vary between lodges and reserves. Tau has some 6-8 of them. They are open land rovers, with no canvas roof (as some have), and with the windshield folded down forward. Along with the driver, they seat ten guests. One sits next to the ranger, who drives (you’re picturing it wrong—the steering wheel is on the right, remember). Then there are three rows of three behind them using stadium seating, each row higher than the previous. These back rows are reached by climbing up footholds on the side and around the rear wheel. It’s a little like climbing monkey bars / a jungle jim. There are also blankets in the seat, since it gets very cold on drives after sunset. Across the dashboard the ranger, in uniform, has a rifle. All the rangers at Tau, including one female one, were white, although later, in Tanzania, all were black.

On our entry drive, things went surprisingly well. The moment we left the bus parking lot and drove off to the lodge, on the right we saw wildebeest, zebra, impala, and a warthog, bing-bing-bing-bing. What a start.

In a moment we were at the main lodge, a two-story glass-and-wood building decorated in African motifs. It had a large lobby with fireplaces, some public rooms, a dining room, and a terrace above, where, as we signed for our keys, we simultaneously were signing an indemnity statement.

One nice thing about Tau, as well as the other lodge some of us went to, is that it was built along one side of a watering hole, making it particularly easy to spot animals right from the lodge, and from your own room.

The rooms are actually separate chalets, I think 28, extending 14 to one side and 14 to the other of the main lodge, all around the watering hole. I was in # 3 to the far left, which turned out to be a particularly good location, since other guests kept stopping by my area to watch. Each chalet had a thatch sloped roof. The bed had netting around, I think more for atmosphere than anything else, since the chalets were climate-controlled, and the weather was too nippy anyway for mosquitoes. The bathroom had a large, corner tub, and the shower was outside through a glass door, enclosed by a wall. The showers in the frigid air were particularly enjoyable right after dawn each morning since the hot water came up promptly, and in an ample spray.

But at the foot of the bed was the door to the deck, and immediately upon arrival at my chalet, with my bag still in my hand, through the glass of the door to the deck I saw my first elephant. What a propitious beginning.

The watering hole is long and narrow, running the length of the chalets and the lodge. A meter / yard from the deck is a low, unobtrusive metal fence, and just beyond that is the watering hole, which is perhaps 10 meters / yards across. And on the other bank was this huge bull elephant, just passing the time of day. For no apparent reason, this guy was sporting a considerable fifth leg at the moment, but that’s life.

I’ll come to the game drives in a moment, but let me jump to the middle of the full day we were there, the second day. It was between game drives, and I decided to sit on my deck and do some writing. You can imagine how quiet the animals are, and when I looked up from the laptop after a while, I saw two elephants who had appeared without my noticing. This time they wanted a drink, and together, they dipped their trunks into the water, then squirted the water into their mouths, rather sloppily I might say, with a lot of dribbling.

After they left, slowly and ponderously, I saw some half-dozen zebras appear. Two rolled in the dust for a while, then all of them went down to the water to drink. Picture this: six zebras lined side-to-side facing me, heads low, drinking. But because of the slope of the bank, their forequarters were also considerably lower than their hindquarters. This gave me a unique perspective. The stripes on these six perfectly aligned zebras seen from above as it were, presented an amazing herringbone pattern across all six backs from my point of view. It was amazing.

But it was the game drives where you saw most of the animals. They were three hours long each, at 4 PM that first half-day, then at 8 and 4 the next day. On the day we were leaving, they actually had scheduled another one, but had to cut it short, since extra time had to be allowed later on for the border crossing formalities. Many of us just skipped that last short one, including me, since nine hours of riding had shown us quite a bit.

Before we left that first afternoon, drinks were served, and I met Dave, one of the rangers. He seemed so interesting, that I stuck with him for all three drives. He was South African, but his parents had emigrated from Zimbabwe early on. Unusual for a ranger, he had attended university, with a major, appropriately, in zoology. I learned a lot from Dave, including at the two dinners, where he joined the table I was at.

I found I had to put the drives into perspective that made sense to me. In North America, we see deer along the road, maybe bear; once I saw a moose. In the West, there are cougars, antilope, mountain goats and longhorn sheep, to say nothing of the reviving herds of bison (buffalo). The terrain in Africa has consistently been like that of the US Southwest, with grass, currently beige in the winter, and low trees and bushes. This simple, familiar terrain is referred to locally as “the bush” which makes it sound MUCH more exotic than it is. In some places, the trees are fuller, and the look is more like the northern US and Canada. (Disabuse yourself of mental images of Tarzan swinging from vines in a jungle.) Therefore, in this familiar landscape, we were going to look for African wildlife that is frequently parallel to North American wildlife, although some are of course startlingly different, such as giraffes and elephants.

The roads are dirt. Then there are tracks to the side of the road through the grass that are usually two deep ruts. On occasion, we drive off-road entirely through the grass. Amazingly, Dave never had to go beyond two-wheel drive, his additional options being four-wheel, then low gear. I suspect these vehicles could climb a wall.

We started out well. Right in front of us, two lions crossed the road. Dave recognized them (out of 74 lions in the park) as an older female and her niece. The older female’s sister had died, and she adopted her niece. I would have been satisfied with that, but Dave decided to pursue them through the grass. When we later found them, they just sat there, licking their paws, like big kittens. We saw females, and some young males, but never saw a male with the characteristic huge mane. The rangers are also on radio contact with each other, not only with Tau rangers, but with any rangers nearby. Anyone finding something interesting announces it, but there is a priority system, since too many vehicles arriving at once from all directions would spook the animals. In some circumstances we had to wait our turn, and ended up not seeing a given animal.

We saw impala, zebra, hartebeest, wildebeest, and antelope. After two hours, we pulled over for sundowners (“happy hour”). Dave pulled out a small table and cloth from the back of the vehicle while some of us, women included, went (warily) to water the grass. There were munchies and a full-bar variety of drinks on ice. Enjoying sundowners as the sun goes down on the African countryside is—ironic as it may seem—a highly civilized activity.

The next morning the break during the game drive instead involved tea, coffee, or chocolate with rusks (biscotti). Then, that afternoon, a number of Tau vehicles met at a rendezvous point in order to have sundowners for the entire group, this time with hot hors d’oeuvres brought from the Tau kitchen. If you wish to make it sound exotic, say that we rendezvoused “out in the bush”, but having a gin-and-tonic in one hand and an eggroll in the other makes it really seem quite the usual thing to do.

We did come across some elephants (out of 500) to the side of the road and watched them for a while. Later it was really quite funny when we got stuck right behind a huge elephant slowly walking down the dirt road in front of us. Since you don’t argue right-of-way with an elephant, we drove slowly behind—quite close, actually--that huge walking backside, until he finally decided to turn off to the left.

At one point a female elephant with a baby right behind her ran across the road, soon followed by a male in pursuit. Dave said that male won’t get any hanky-panky, since elephants gestate for 22 months, and then take care of the young for two more years. That’s almost four years for a female being hanky-panky-less.

Both evenings, once the sun went down, Dave turned on his hand-held floodlight to see what the night had to offer. We did catch an owl, but particularly impressive was the familiar form of a hyena running along in the bush. Not at all impressive was the form of people sitting in the game vehicle wrapped in blankets to keep out the increasing cold. The difference between warm afternoon temperatures and temperatures after the sun goes down is remarkable.

Also that first evening we came a cross a breeding elephant herd. It was in the dark, and breeding elephants can be very skittish. I wasn’t comfortable until we slowly picked our way through the herd—quite a number had their eye on us--and finally left them alone.

The second afternoon we finally found our giraffes. There was one to the right, munching from a tree, and at first we thought there was just one to the left, until we moved up a bit and saw the baby next to the mother, just about half her height.

A major animal, one of the Big Five, is the Cape buffalo. It’s a massive animal with those very thick horns on its head that look like a fat handlebar moustache. On the second afternoon, Dave realized that there was a huge herd of buffalo in a thicket on the side of the road, where they like to hide and keep out of sight. So, into the grass we went and came close to one or two. But then that second evening, as it began to get dark, we were near a large watering hole and we saw two huge herds of buffalo moving to the water, maybe with 60-80 head each. It was dusk and just beginning to get dark, but the animals were still visible. Then, an elephant over on the left decided he wanted to urge the buffalo to move off of his territory a little faster, and we heard the singular sound of the African night: an elephant trumpeting.

The language of the region is Tswana. Right across the border, Botswana (“Land of the Tswana”), is virtually unique in having only one language rather than many, and Tswana overlaps into this side of the border as well. It was very curious that the rangers, all white and heavily Afrikaaner, regularly named every animal by its Tswana name. I was interested earlier to find out that tau means “lion”, and you’d hear a ranger on the radio talking about seeing a tau, or asking if anyone had seen a tutla, which I found out was a giraffe. Those two I could remember, but at dinner I asked Dave to give me a couple more. For the record, a nare is a buffalo and a tlou (pronounced klo) is an elephant. Dave was a fount of information. It’s possible he may have picked up an odd fact or two in conversation from me, too.

Both evenings, dinner at Tau was held in a boma, which is a traditional African stockade-like structure open to the sky and with a sand floor. There was a roaring fire in the center and braziers between the tables, but that didn’t always stop the cold. Also, ash kept flying about. However, the buffet dinners were enjoyable.

On the second night, all of a sudden, the black staff that we had been dealing with behind the desk and in the dining rooms appeared in a different guise. They started streaming out of the kitchen that was attached to the boma and were merrily singing in Tswana. They were rollicking, happy tunes, and some guys in chef’s hats also started doing impromptu dances with unusual moves. Then I heard what I’m sure was ululation. I’ve read about ululation but had never heard it before. I checked with a couple of people, including Dave, and he said that yes, Muslim women also do what this woman was doing, but he wasn’t familiar with the term, yet I’m sure that’s what it was.

Ululation is a singing technique done by women only. It’s done to show sorrow or joy, and it’s often done at Muslim funerals. A woman hits a relatively high note and then does a sort of tremolo with it. I was sure that the woman who usually was at the front desk was the one who was ululating while the others were singing, in this case, obviously, to show happiness rather than sadness. As I think about it, I suppose you can compare ululation to yodeling. Yodeling is one kind of vibrato that can accompany regular singing, and ululation works similarly as an accompaniment to music. I’m glad I got to hear it, yet I strongly suspect many guests didn’t realize what it was they were hearing.

I suppose I can mention here that, before leaving New York, in preparation for Africa I listened again to the theatrical recording of The Lion King of 1997, music by Elton John and Tim Rice, and a tour de force for Julie Taymor, who was director, costume designer, co-mask designer, and co-puppet designer, and who won Tonys for Best Direction of a Musical and Best Costume Design. It seems that so much of that production, of the animals, of the spirit of the setting, is truly reflected in what can be seen here.

That last morning at Madikwe and at Tau (and in South Africa) the buses got us in no time to the border, where we left the buses to walk across the border to Botswana (#110 for me). I had thought it relatively rare to walk across the US-Mexico border, but others told me it’s rather common to do so in third-world countries.

Nicholas Schofield, who is the historian/lecturer on board, pointed out that Botswana is an especially stable country. He also pointed out something that I had read about earlier. Before Botswana was independent, its capital was outside the country. Mafikeng, in South Africa just over the Botswana border, and famous in the Anglo-Boer War for a siege, was used as the capital of Botswana, since there were no towns of adequate size in Botswana proper. On Botswana’s independence in the 1960’s of course that had to change, and Gaborone was chosen as the capital. It is now also the largest city of Botswana and is growing rapidly; it has been called the fastest growing city in the world. In Gaborone we rejoined the train.

Nick then gave one of the several lectures he’d be giving on the last stretch of the trip. This one was on Cecil Rhodes, and Nick pointed out that Rhodes left a triple legacy: a financial one, for his work with diamonds and de Beers; a political one, for his work in the governments of South Africa and Northern and Southern Rhodesia, and an educational one, for his funding of the Rhodes Scholarships. An interesting point Nick made, and to me a convincing one, is whether or not Rhodes was gay. There is little to no proof, but he had a male secretary, Neville Pickering, which was not unusual, since almost all secretaries of that era were male. However, when Pickering died suddenly, Rhodes dropped everything and was inconsolable during and after the funeral, considered by many as an indication of a closer friendship than just a working one. It would also add another name to the list of movers and shakers who was gay.

Later that day we crossed into Zimbabwe (named for the ancient ruins of Great Zimbabwe), formerly Southern Rhodesia, which now perhaps should be referred to as Mugabe-Land. Throughout the trip in South Africa, I was following the circus of Mugabe’s sham run-off election. In any case, Zimbabwe was TCC #111 for me.

Heading for Victoria Falls for the next day, we stopped at Hwange Game Reserve in Zimbabwe, which the rail line passed through. But trying to complete our plan to stop there was an additional adventure. Just a few kilometers short of arriving, the train halted because of a broken-down freight train in front of us on the one-track route. We sat for over an hour, watching daylight disappear, when we suddenly started moving. This is the sort of thing that Rohan Vos contends with every day on trips like this. If he had done nothing, who knows how long we may have sat there. But he started up the spare locomotive the Pride of Africa keeps, connected the two trains, and we actually pushed the other train out of the way. When we got off at the reserve, it was fun to see the two trains hooked together, forming a long, mismatched pair. Anyway, while we were at the reserve, our spare locomotive then pushed the freight train to a siding somewhere to fend for itself.

Actually, the game vehicles from Hwange had started to come to get us, so when we started up, we could see them turn around on the road and then hurry to get back to the regular stopping place. These vehicles were a little ragged, were a bit smaller than at Tau, and had that canvas roof one sometimes sees on a frame above our heads, making a drive in the short time remaining at dusk even darker. But we did go to a watering hole to see Cape buffalo, saw a solitary ostrich, a couple of giraffes, and many baboons, plus the odd hare and foxes. We saw here and earlier at Tau the birds known as hornbills, one of which features prominently as a character in The Lion King. After the short game drive, we had dinner outdoors in a sort of simple boma once again, with fires blazing in the chill, dark evening. There was little new at this stop, and I personally feel the hit of the evening was, following the Big Push, seeing the two trains mating.

There are other multiple headaches in running this route. Two English ladies, for certain reasons, knew they were not to enter Zimbabwe, so Rohan oversaw their being driven from Tau back to Joburg, flown to the Zambia side of Vic Falls, then rejoining the train later. Also, the husband of a Spanish couple found out at the last minute that he had to give expert testimony in court three days before the end of the trip. I overheard Rohan making some weird local flight arrangements to Dar, saying that if they didn’t work out, he’d send them in his own plane, and then also took care of adjusting their international flights to Madrid. Rohan also told me about animal accidents. Just as people driving cars (or trains) in North America have to be careful about hitting animals in the dark, particularly deer, on one occasion the Pride of Africa hit a giraffe, and on another, an elephant. In neither case was it good for the animal. Yet with all he has on his mind, one busy evening at dinner, while Nick Schofield and I were deep in conversation about some historical topic, we looked up to see that the “waiter” bussing the dishes from our table was none other than Rohan, as usual in his tux. Rohan is a hands-on jack-of-all-trades, but running a train like this through these underdeveloped countries north of South Africa, I suppose you really have to be.

Nick and I had a very interesting conversation at dinner that evening, and I met a lot of interesting people on this trip. There were many Americans, a few Canadians, some Brits and a couple of Aussies. I had an interesting conversation with two South African couples one evening. The two gentlemen were former teachers of Rohan’s at his private school. Actually, I have an open invitation for dinner some time in the future. There is a considerable number of German speakers on board, and I had at least two German-speaking dinners. I had heard that that couple from Spain was on board, and said hello to them in Spanish that day crossing into Botswana. That evening they invited me to their table, and the conversation in Spanish (Castilian Spanish, of course!), was a real delight. We discussed the architecture in Bilbao (Gehry, Calatrava, Foster), the art in the Prado, and most everything else. There were two Swedish couples on board, but I was only able to put together the odd sentence or two with them, but that was fun, too. If we had been in Sweden, the atmosphere would have pushed a few more Swedish words out of me, that’s how it usually goes for me. I also had occasion to push out the odd Portuguese, Dutch, and French sentence, but without the right atmosphere, I can only easily do German, Spanish, and French. Still, all in all, this train is considerably more upscale and international than the Transcantábrico last summer in Spain. Here, everybody was capable of speaking and understanding English, while on the Transcantábrico, it broke down to three cliques, Spanish, Portuguese, and English, each group mostly monolingual, with just a few exceptions.

I will also add that I’m the only passenger on the train as far as I can tell who keeps his compartment door open while working, that is, typing away on the laptop. (On the other hand, I’m sure I’m the only passenger working at all.) It’s a wonderful way to catch people passing by for a chat. For instance, one day, the train’s doctor stopped for a chat, and I invited him to sit down for a bit to talk. It’s no social center, but it does keep contacts flowing.

Victoria Falls   At the northwestern end of Zimbabwe is Victoria Falls, Vic Falls for short, or Mosi-Oa-Tunya (“The Smoke that Thunders”) to give it its African name. The Zambezi River and others, draining countries to the west, flows over the falls between Zimbabwe to the south and Zambia to the north, and proceeds then through Mozambique to the Indian Ocean. The Zambezi is the fourth longest river in Africa after the Nile, the Niger, and the Congo.

As the train approached tiny Vic Falls Station it stopped for a moment in sort of a rail yard. It was surprising to look at the adjacent freight train and to see it overrun with baboons, under, over, and in between. These were good-sized animals, and were running about as if they were squirrels. One mother, as she ran ahead on all fours on top of a boxcar, had her baby clinging to her chest for dear life.

VICTORIA FALLS HOTEL Leaving the Vic Falls Station, it’s just a convenient walk across a plaza to enter the Victoria Falls Hotel, built as a railroad hotel in 1904 in a genteel, colonial style. It was two-story, and rambled across its grounds. This hotel, like the Cape Grace, is a member of the Leading Hotels of the World and the Leading Small Hotels of the World. In 1947, it hosted the visit of the British royal family. Yet it was disquieting to see a large picture of Robert Mugabe behind the reception desk.

On the second, and last, half-day at the hotel, we were eating lunch in a pavilion and noticed three wort hogs calmly burrowing in the manicured lawn. These are really good-sized animals, and I was surprised that no one from the hotel shooed them away. They have a huge head and shoulders, out of balance with their slender hindquarters, and it was odd how each one of the three would get down on its front knees to be able to burrow with their snouts in the ground. It seemed to be the normal way of “doing business”.

The hotel is downstream at about the second or third gorges (see below) and as part of the splendid view you get from the grounds you could see the spray from the falls up in the first gorge, as well as the bridge (1905) crossing the line of gorges into Zambia on the other side. The bridge was built for the rail line, but now also accepts road traffic, in one direction at a time. In the movie “African Queen” Humphrey Bogart tells Katherine Hepburn that his character first came to the region to help build the Victoria Falls Bridge.

VICTORIA FALLS My original research had never explained to me why Victoria Falls exists at all, especially with its seven zigzag gorges, nor why it’s so very wide. I got the first answer from Nick Schofield, and on studying the falls first-hand, the second suddenly appeared so amazingly simple and obvious. I found one of the joys of being here, in addition to the sight of the falls, is understanding why it works just the way it does.

Geologically, the area had had repeated volcanic overflows, resulting in layers of very hard basalt. After that had hardened, further pressure from below caused it to crack open in a zigzag pattern. That superficially might explain the seven zigzag gorges, except for the fact that then sand blew in from the Kalahari Desert, which still covers most of Botswana, and those cracks filled up, eventually hardening to sandstone.

But sandstone is very soft, especially compared to the basalt surrounding it. An early form of the Zambesi, let’s call it the Proto-Zambesi, started draining areas to the west and then flowed in this direction. The path of least resistance was down the zigzag sandstone filling, and, over time, the water carved the sandstone away, down to the original basalt. Thus, a Proto-Vic Falls wore the sandstone out of the basalt and formed the seventh gorge downriver some two million years ago, then backed around a zig to form the sixth, then around a zag to form the fifth, and so on. From various vantage points you can look down into the abyss of these gorges, with a distant, rather small Zambesi at the bottom. The Victoria Falls Hotel, as I said, is located somewhere between the second and third gorges, with a view of the bridge, located just about where the second gorge zags to the present gorge, the first one. (But it won’t remain first forever—see below.)

Do picture these gorges as going left and right like a lightning flash, around hairpin turns at each end, to form this magnificent zigzag as seen from above. This unusual shape is all due to the original cracking of the basalt in this pattern.

So here we have gorge two going to the right, and in the area of the bridge, turning left directly in front of the falls, becoming gorge one. The image will become clearer in a moment, but let me indicate how the answer to the surprising width of the falls appeared to me.

That first afternoon, everyone went in different directions. I had read about how to visit Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls National Park, so I proceeded for about fifteen minutes down a path from the hotel grounds to a point where I came to tracks and a road crossing my way. If I turned right, I’d have crossed the bridge into Zambia, but I crossed the road and entered the park.

This is a point to bring up the horrible inflation Zimbabwe is suffering under Mugabe. The Zimbabwe dollar is close to worthless. All non-locals have to pay an entrance fee to the park in hard, foreign currency. The sign asks for US$20, €15, £10, or the equivalent in Rand or other outside currencies. Then, a handwritten note below says you can get in for fifty billion Zimbabwe dollars. I assume it was a handwritten note because in a couple of days, inflation would have made the equivalent figure higher. At the hotel, I saw a credit card slip someone was signing in order to pay for a glass of wine. It came to Z$1,600,000.00. Someone else had gotten hold of a Zimbabwe banknote, high denomination, of course. The surprise was that it had a preprinted note on it that it was valid only until 30 June 2008. Someone else had one that had already expired, on 15 May 2008. Can you picture having money with a “use-by” date?

Back to the falls. Let me first indicate what you see, and how you see it. Then I hope it will become clear why the falls is 1.7 kilometers / 1 mile wide. You start at the left, at the statue to David Livingstone, which overlooks the falls. It is said that Livingstone “discovered” the falls, naming it for Queen Victoria, but locals knew about it long before he got there, using the name Mosi-Oa-Tunya, so it’s best to say Livingstone was the first Westerner to see the falls.

At the statue, you’re just where you can see the Zambezi still flowing ahead, but there is drama at this point, since you know that all that water you’re seeing is about to drop percipitously. The closest water you’re seeing in front of you, still flowing left to right, is called the Devil’s Cataract. As you move to the right to where the water’s falling, you find yourself standing at the very end of the hairpin shape of the gorge, the first one. Just beyond Devil’s Cataract, you see a small outcropping of rock, with water falling BEHIND it. At first I missed the significance of that outcropping, but what it shows is that the water has finished carving the curve you’re standing at and has zigged to start a new gorge! Standing at this end of the hairpin, you can look the length of the 1.7 kilometers / one mile of the first gorge.

Right nearby, you can climb down 73 high steps (and then up again--they do warn you!) for a lower vantage point, called Cataract View. The park proceeds down the right side of this hairpin gorge, with the water falling on the left side of it. Do realize that since we’re talking about two sides of the same gorge, you are looking face-on at the top of the falls from only 60 meters / 200 feet away as you walk down the path and onto its turnoffs.

Across on the falls side, the water skips a section because Cataract Island is there on top, so the water goes on either side of it. Then comes the Main Falls, then Livingstone Island, then Horseshoe and Rainbow Falls, until at Danger Point you can’t go any further on the park side, because you’ve reached the next zag (at the bridge) where gorge one turns to become gorge two. But you can still see a bit further along the Eastern Cataract on the Zambia side. At Danger Point and under the bridge is the only spot in the park you can see way down to the abyss of gorge two, since gorge one is catching the flow of the falls and is filled with spray.

Let me see if you’ve figured out why Victoria Falls is so wide. What I did to prove it to myself is walk back to the left end at the statue. As I see it, the REAL main part of the falls is Devil’s Cataract. It carved all of gorge one, and is now turning the bend to start a new gorge. But apparently over many centuries, a lot more water has been coming down the Zambezi, and hard-working Devil’s Cataract can’t accommodate it all, so all this excess water (but the excess is now the norm), floods over the SIDE of the gorge, which is so long. Picture a garden hose running water over the edge of a curb. That’s Devil’s Cataract. Now picture a thunderstorm pouring large quantities of water off a sidewalk the entire length of the curb. That’s Victoria Falls today.

Just Devil’s Cataract would theoretically have a reasonable amount of spray, but the huge width of the falls—and all of it falling into a narrow gorge at that—sets up a vast permanent spray. Standing at the Devil’s Cataract end it’s particularly easy to see rainbows in the sunlight over the spray, and at one point I saw a double rainbow. This constant, unrelenting spray supplies so much water that the park area on its edge, as opposed to all of Zimbabwe and Zambia around it, is an actual rain forest, lush with all sorts of plants and flowers. One is also warned in advance that you’re going to get wet by the spray as you walk down the length of the path, and onto the frequent turnoffs. They actually rent ponchos at the entrance. But I had my jacket, and under the bright sun, the falling spray is like a spring mist (sometimes a heavy mist!). You get a little wet, but it’s fun, and you dry off in no time.

I hope this description gives an image of what it’s all about. Here are some facts. In the rainy season from November to April, the spray is over 400 meters / 1000 feet high, and sometimes twice that. It can be visible from up to 50 kilometers / 30 miles away, so it should be a surprise that from the Victoria Falls Hotel you can see a line of spray rising between the trees. Also note, that in the dry season, the water flow is reduced considerably—I heard down to 10% and I also heard down to 3%. Seeing it in July was not fully into the dry season, and it was still spectacular.

Victoria Falls is the largest sheet of falling water in the world. It can also be described as the largest falls in the world (twice the height of Niagara), but not the highest or widest. Here is a comparison of Victoria, Niagara, and Iguazu falls (Iguazu/Iguaçu Falls lies between Argentina and Brazil, and I have yet to see it).

HEIGHT: Victoria 108m/360’; Niagara 51m/167’; Iguazu 64-82m/210-269’

WIDTH: Victoria 1700m/5577’; Niagara 1203m/3947’; Iguazu 2700m/8858’

Note that Victoria Falls is over a mile wide. Also note that, when Livingstone “discovered” the falls, he did so from ABOVE. He was rowed out to Livingstone Island (hence the name), and he looked down over the edge. However, it should be noted that he did this in the dry season when the water level was way down, something which I understand can still be done during the dry season.

SUNSET CRUISE ON THE ZAMBEZI This had been announced long in advance, but I didn’t think it would be as nice as it was. That first of two half-days here, after I came back from the park, we all got in buses to go for the boat ride. Not knowing the area in advance, I somehow pictured being on the river AFTER the falls, but that shows the importance of orienting oneself. Downriver would be full of rapids, and down in an abyss. In a few minutes the buses reached a point on the Zambezi BEFORE the falls where it was wide and calm in the late-afternoon sun. A baboon sat and watched as we boarded. There were a number of what seemed to be large pontoon boats in this area, and the group filled two of them. They were rectangular, roofed-over, and open-sided above the railing. We sat at café tables, and hors-d’oeuvres and beverages were included. I can highly recommend Zambezi brand beer. When that ran out, Lion brand was pretty good, too.

It was so calm and relaxing on the river. The captain did spot a crocodile sunning on the grassy bank, and we pulled over, but it wasn’t too big a one. Anyway, crocodiles look like alligators (to draw another parallel to the US, particularly Florida).

But then came the fun. The captain spotted hippos. We went over to where there were four good-sized ones (aren’t they all pretty much good-sized?) They would submerge (I understand they can’t really swim, and just walk on the bottom). Then just six points would show: two ears, two eyes, two nostrils. Then some would climb onto the bank, but just half-way out of the water. This was really nice, and I got to see the hippos I’d been wanting to see.

There was then a nice sunset with a large sun. No, it wasn’t the pink-cloud kind with a red sun. The clouds were blue-gray on the horizon, and the huge orange sun looked like a big eggyolk in the darkening African sky. I called it my African eggyolk sunset.

On the way back to dinner at the hotel, we first stopped off to see an African folklore show. Contrary to false images you may have, this was the only way to see the traditional costumes, complete with spears. In the first part, there were five marimba-like instruments where they played a number of African folk tunes, although, given our global world culture, they did slip in “When the Saints Go Marching In”, then later “Never on Sunday”, and they of course couldn’t leave out “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” from The Lion King. On these marimbas, they all sounded good. There was also traditional dancing, and two stilt walkers, one with short stilts, and one with huge ones, these second stilts alone being taller than a person.

THE COPTER KID I had never flown in a helicopter, but 2008 was to be my year. I’ve already made a reservation to fly over the Na Pali cliffs in Kauai when I go to Hawaii this fall, something I’ve always wanted to see. But Nick Schofield, who had been making reservations on the train for various activities at Vic Falls, said this was something I should do, given my interests, so I dug up the fee in US cash (this is Zimbabwe!) for the 12-minute flight, and he made a reservation for me. I was glad that my reservation happened to fall on the second half-day, since by that time I was already well-oriented about what I was seeing. So I’ll be taking a total of two helicopter flights in 2008, maybe more, since now I have my eye on two others in Hawaii. I may develop into the Copter Kid.

A van picked me up at 9:15 that morning, then stopped for at two other hotels for a total of three other passengers, all women. We all had to get on the scales to weigh in. They had timed it so the previous flight was just coming back as we were ready. I had expected a helicopter that was dumpy and military-like, but it turned out to be a cute, egg-shaped, new-as-a-button thing, with a splashy logo on its otherwise bright white side that looked an awful lot like the Lion King logo, and I’m glad to see that theme repeating.

The rotors never stopped as three of us squeezed in hip-to-hip in the back and put on seat belts, while one sat up front next to the pilot (and THAT, I’m glad to say, wasn’t me). Also, I’m sure you’re picturing the front row incorrectly—the passenger was on the left and the pilot was on the right—remember the British heritage here, just like in the game vehicle at Tau.

I’m glad to say it lifted off so gently and quietly (other than the noise of the rotors) that we were up before I knew we had left the ground. And below was a perfect map of what I’d been describing. First, the wide Zambezi before the falls, where we had just sailed the evening before, then Devil’s Cataract, with the falls running the length of the side of the gorge, spray as high as ever, then the bridge, and the lower gorges, with the Victoria Falls Hotel beyond. He went back and forth several times. He dipped once left and once right, which I could really have done without. Then, fulfilled, we were back on the ground.

We walked across from the hotel to board the train again in mid-afternoon. It went through town, and then slowly over the bridge. Nothing’s allowed to stop on the bridge, but Rohan announced how the train would be having a “technical breakdown” while on the bridge to give us time to get out, look over the edge and walk to an area on the side for a view of the train in front of the falls. I will now mention that one of the several activities available—to me quite frivolous—is bungee jumping upside-down off the Victoria Falls Bridge into the abyss. One of us on the train had done it just that morning. Some of the staff said they’d done it, or would do it here sometime. I heard that Rohan did it once. But, as we were on the side, I saw someone shooting down into the abyss, and bouncing, just like a paddle ball. To each his own.

The train then continued off the bridge and into Zambia, the former Northern Rhodesia, for me TCC #112.

Dar es Salaam   After the Victoria Falls, it was a matter primarily of a long-distance shoot across Zambia and Tanzania to Dar es Salaam, so this might be a good time to discuss a couple of other points dealing with this entire region.

CAPRIVI STRIP Flying in to Johannesburg, before mentioning overflying Botswana and Gabarone, I mentioned overflying Namibia and the Caprivi Strip. It’s this latter oddity that’s the current topic.

Whenever you look at a map and see a panhandle, there’s bound to be some story behind it—think of the Alaska panhandle, or Florida’s. But those occurred by happenstance. The Caprivi Strip, foolish as it is, was deliberately planned.

You must look at a map for this. What is now Namibia, way over on the west coast of Africa, was once Deutsch Südwest-Afrika / German Southwest Africa. Before Germany lost its African colonies after the First World War, what is now Tanzania on the east coast of Africa was Deutsch Ost-Afrika / German East Africa. (By the way, I understand both places still show some German influence, including some African speakers of German and German architectural styles.) Now back when both of these were still German colonies, the German government decided it wanted to connect them (don’t ask me why), and this is what it did, in 1890.

Off the German coast in the North Sea is the island of Helgoland (English version: Heligoland; it’s nice, I’ve been there), which was in the late 19C a British possession, and Germany wanted it, since it was so close to home. The island of Zanzibar off the east African coast, on the other hand, was a German possession, and Britain wanted it. This situation resulted in the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty of 1890. That would have been simple enough, but Germany added a condition. It also required that Britain slice off a long, narrow piece of northern Botswana and add it on to German Southwest Africa, now Namibia, as a huge panhandle, extending eastwards some 450 kilometers / 280 miles to the Zambezi River. (This panhandle effectively also cuts Botswana off from Angola so that Namibia is both to the west AND to the north of Botswana.)

The German Chancellor at the time, right after Bismarck, was Leo von Caprivi, and this panhandle is known as the Caprivi Strip, but also appears on maps (such as my Michelin) under its original German name of Caprivi-Zipfel (a Zipfel is a tip, and a Zipfelmütze, a “cap with a tip”, is a nightcap). The purpose of the Caprivi-Zipfel was to give German access to the Zambezi, which access Namibia now has. However, what use that was remains to be seen. How does road access along the strip to the Zambezi ABOVE Vic Falls accomplish anything in connecting two colonies? If you somehow put a boat into the Zambezi, you have the falls in the way. Even somehow avoiding the falls, one was still in British, and further down, Portuguese territory before emerging on the east coast of Africa to sail up to German East Africa. What sense does this make?

An additional curiosity of this situation is that it does result in a quadripoint, which we discussed regarding Four Corners (2007/14). This is where four countries (or states, or any political entities) come together at one point (not necessarily perpendicularly). So, because of the Caprivi Strip, there is a point in the middle of the Zambezi somewhere west of where we had our sunset cruise where Zambia is on the north side, and Namibia (via the strip), Botswana, and Zimbabwe come in from the south side, forming a quadripoint. But was it worth it?

LIVINGSTONE & STANLEY There are people who are famous for being famous. Fill in here the name of numerous “celebrities”, or worse still, numerous “starlets”. We know them as “famous” because we hear their name a lot. They may have some talent, or more likely not, that’s irrelevant to being “famous”. Just ponder a few names for a moment that fit into this category. You’ll have a large selection.

But in a historical context, it’s unusual to find people who are famous for being famous. We expect that people in the history books are people of some merit (or infamy) and that events in the history books are valid events. And then we come across David Livingstone and H.M. Stanley, and worst of all that “great event”, Stanley “finding” Livingstone, with that immortal quote, expressed with quintessential Victorian understatement: “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”

Balderdash. I will yield that there is some degree of merit for both Livingstone and Stanley, which I’ll discuss in a moment. But beyond that:

David Livingstone was a Scotsman known for three accomplishments. He became a physician, and then a medical missionary to Africa. By all accounts, his missionary work was essentially a failure. Strike one.

However, in all fairness, there will be no strikes two and three, because he does earn merit there. He is known for being a crusader against slavery in East Africa (the Arab slave trade), and many former slaves mourned his death. [See Zanzibar later in 2008/12] This is a valid accomplishment, although Wilberforce campaigned against slavery in West Africa, yet we hear his name less frequently. Clearly, Livingstone being famous for being famous worked in his favor here on the slavery issue in the history books.

We now center on his third accomplishment, that of being an explorer in Africa. This he was. At one point, he walked across the center of Africa from the west coast to the east, then wrote a book about it that did very well in London. To his good fortune, this best seller brought his name before the public and started his being famous for being famous. Other explorers did similar or even more, yet their names are forgotten by the general public. You can see the impetus starting here of Livingstone riding a wave of publicity that made his name a household word. As an explorer, he also did “discover” Mosi-oa-Tunya, which impressed him sufficiently so that he named it Victoria Falls.

Primarily because of all the publicity surrounding whatever he did, he (but few of the other explorers of his time), became a popular national hero in Victorian Britain, an icon of mythic status, buried in Westminster Abbey. His reputation surpassed that of other explorers because of the publicity, that is, he became famous for being famous. He also had his quirks. It is possible that he suffered from manic depression, or bipolar disorder, possibly explaining why he preferred solitude at times. There then came a period while he was in Africa where he lost contact with the outside world for six years. He could have contacted the outside world, but he did not. Was it his illness? Was he trying to gain even more publicity by pulling a Greta Garbo? We don’t know for sure, but remember, Greta Garbo, who had been a talented actress earlier in life, lived on in later years by the publicity of her seeking her solitude. This is also being famous for being famous. Anyway, just how “lost” was Livingstone?

H. M. Stanley was a Welshman who worked as a reporter and who was active out of New Orleans. He fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It is reported that some of the news he sent back to his newspaper about his adventures in the Wild West were less than factual, or, if factual, it is possible that he didn’t actually witness what he reported on. In recent years we have seen stories of reporters writing fiction and presenting it to their newspapers and to the public as compelling fact, even at the New York Times. In any case, Stanley eventually became involved with the New York Herald.

The New York Herald was a major newspaper of its day. It existed independently from 1835-1924. It was the most sensationalist of its contemporary papers, and its ability to entertain made it the circulation leader of its time. Its publisher, James Gordon Bennett, Sr (1795-1872), said the function of a newspaper “is not to instruct, but to startle”, and apparently that continued under his son, James Gordon Bennett, Jr (1841-1918).

[Digression: There are only two squares in New York named for newspapers, Times Square and Herald Square. The latter square still has a sculpture on its north side dedicated to the Bennetts. The Herald merged with its bitter rival, the Tribune, in 1924 to become the Herald-Tribune, which eventually started an international edition based in Paris, the International Herald-Tribune. While the original paper eventually folded in New York in 1966, its International Edition is still going strong, published, curiously, by the New York Times, whose international edition under its own name had flopped.]

At any rate, back in the 1860’s the Livingstone story was not only hot news in London, but also in New York. James Gordon Bennett, Jr hired Stanley in 1869 to work for the Herald as its overseas correspondent and also financed an expedition by Stanley to Africa to “find” Livingstone. I suspect many people think the whole Livingstone/Stanley story is a British one, and don’t realize the strong American component within it. At any rate Stanley’s reputation remains with us as a journalist and explorer.

Most of the Stanley component of the story takes place in what is today Tanzania. Stanley set out from Zanzibar and finally, on 10 November 1871 he “found” Livingstone in the town of Ujiji near Lake Tanganyika. Afterwards, the two of them explored the region together. There had been controversy whether Lake Tanganyika or Lake Victoria was the source of the Nile, and Stanley is credited with determining that it was Lake Victoria, which had an outflow that went eventually to the Nile, while Lake Tanganyika had no outflow at all. So we give Stanley credit as an explorer (also, one of many). But how about his being a journalist?

It’s the meeting of the two that’s particularly famous. Yet it’s entirely possible that it never happened, at least certainly not in the way it was widely reported, with the famous quote, a quote that’s really too precious to be true—even Victorians didn’t talk like that. Stanley was known to keep an extensive diary of all his travels, yet the pages covering the “meeting” were found to be torn out. Livingstone never mentions the meeting at all. It is entirely possible, especially given Stanley’s reputation, that the whole story of how any such meeting took place is a fabrication, a story “too good to be true”.

There are numerous hand-drawn illustrations of the meeting available, since it was such a widely celebrated “event”. More than one includes, alongside the two principal figures, someone waving an American flag, another indication of that American component in the story, to say nothing of sensationalism.

Don’t you suspect that if you walked up to someone and “found” him as a long-lost prodigal son that you might say the 1871 equivalent of “Hiya, Dave, how ya doin’? Y’ OK?” As staid as the Victorians were, just how probable might it have been that Stanley really said “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” British, especially Victorian understatement is famous, but isn’t that just a bit much? However the actual meeting took place, can’t you just see Livingstone and Stanley, who both knew very well the value of publicity, setting off for Lake Victoria and juicing up the story of the “encounter” for all it’s worth?

If there’s any historical worth to the entire Livingstone/Stanley escapade it’s the lesson of the value of publicity.

On the Pride of Africa, one of Nicholas Schofield’s lectures covered this story, and I’ve blended above some of his facts with those I had researched earlier to come to my own conclusions. He also pointed out that there are many parodies on the famous (non)quote. His favorite was this:

KUNDALILA FALLS Actually, we did make one stop in Zambia, to see Kundalila falls, a Zambian national monument, and have a picnic brunch as well. It was a memorable stop, although the physical component of getting to the falls was a bit problematic, since the dirt path became a rock climb in several spots. Especially given the age factor of the clientele, it would have been best to just have gone to the first view spot of the falls in the distance, rather then keeping on to the second and third. I made it to the second, and some went down into the valley for the third, but I suggest in future the walk be reduced.

In any case, coming back huffing and puffing, one found right on the path a tray of iced towels, followed by a staff member serving mimosas. This would be a nice Rovos touch under any circumstances, but moreso given the exertion just expended.

A few steps beyond, right in the woods, the staff had set up picnic tables, a table with a full bar, and several serving tables with a hot brunch. This contrasted nicely with the Victorian garden party at Melrose House in Pretoria, since this was a woodsy, roll-up-your-sleeves-type picnic under the trees. I was glad to finally see a couple of South African specialties included in the buffet, which I liked well enough to go back for more. Staff members brought around a tray of candies, and I was surprised to see featured among them nothing other than halvah, the Turkish sesame-seed confection that was easily recognized by those with a familiarity of the Mideast, plus those who grew up in New York City (smile). Afterwards, a group picture was taken on the riverbank.

On the train, someone had put a copy of the Travelers’ Century Club list of destinations in the lounge, asking anyone who wished to add to the list to do so, to get a group total of places visited. I was among the last, and was able to add fourteen destinations to the summary that no one else had been to. I believe the grand group total came to 233 (out of 317). Then, as we entered Tanzania, my personal TCC total went up one more to 113. Since East Africa is on UTC+3, overnight we moved our watches ahead to lose an hour.

In both Zambia and Tanzania, we started to see more and more people near the train, some just watching and waving, and many in small villages. The village buildings were largely out of cinderblock, but with thatched roofs. Also, do not gain some antiquated image of how the people were dressed. Kids were dressed like kids anywhere, the men had shirts, jeans, and sneakers, although the women had, along with their blouses, ankle-length skirts. Many women carried their babies in front of them, or behind, in shawl-like affairs.

I’d had some interesting conversations on the train with Rohan Vos, and had gotten used to him teasing me for going and typing in my cabin so much. But he had a surprise for me. The last dinner on the train was to be a masked affair, and just before dinner, Rohan stopped me and asked me if I’d be interested in writing an article for the Rovos commemorative book he’s planning for the railroad’s 20th anniversary in 2009. I was quite flabbergasted, but I suppose all that writing I’d been doing and some of the opinions I’d given about travel made an impression on him. You have to picture two people in dinner dress (tuxes), with fancy masks across their eyes, drinks in hand, discussing a writing project. I agreed, and immediately got a mental image of how I’d modify and extend my current website texts on Africa to create something. Who knows, maybe nothing will come of it, but it was nice to be asked.

Tanzania has a large Arab influence (especially in Zanzibar), as shown by the Arabic name of its biggest city, Dar es Salaam. As you know, salaam is a common Arabic greeting (related to Hebrew shalom), and means “peace”, so the name of the city translates as “Haven of Peace”. It has 2.5 million inhabitants. What is now Tanzania was earlier in the 20C German East Africa, then became British. On independence it named itself Tanganyika after Lake Tanganyika, but when it merged with the nearby island of Zanzibar in 1964, the two names resulted in the composite name Tan-Zan-ia. Dar es Salaam has been the capital in various of these periods, but since the mid-70’s, the inland city of Dodoma has become technically the capital, although many functions still remain in Dar.

On arrival in the station in Dar, as we got off the train, the Tanzania Police Band greeted us with rousing brass-band music. Some two dozen band members were seated in a double semicircle as we were given glasses of juice and as luggage was being distributed. Most of us were flying home later that same day, a small group was going for a weekend tour to Zanzibar, and seven of us, including me, were going for a week in Tanzania, to the Serengeti Plains, Ngorongoro Crater, and then to Zanzibar as well. But that’s another story.