Sh*t from Shinola

The Victoria Falls area is beautiful to explore. Our morning started with a walking tour of the Zimbabwe side of the falls. It felt good to have a little exercise after a 20 hour flight from the states. We left Saturday morning from L.A. and flew to D.C. With just a one hour layover we were off to Johannesburg, South Africa; a fifteen hour flight. The seat next to me was vacant so I was able to curl up in two seats for a nap or two, an uncomfortable nap but sleep nonetheless. We arrived in Jo-burg at 4pm Sunday (10 hours time difference). So a 2 hour walk in the fresh tropical air of a rain forest adjacent the falls was most refreshing. Our guide, Sim, suggested we suit up in 3/4 length rain jackets since we'd be descending into the gorge a bit and the mist from the falls would drench us. It did, as did the rain storm that blew overhead under the brightly shining sun. It was a lush forest laden with vines and monkeys and incredible vistas of the falls from every imaginable angle. There is a new gorge being carved into the Zambia side which should only take about 10 billion years to break through. One of the rock faces had just a few leaks springing from it and was otherwise dry. I said to someone I bet there are extreme sportsmen who will find a way to repel down that wall as volumes of water rage along side. Sure enough, one of the guys said he'd seen a group of people scaling the cliff without harnesses the very next day. Crazy!

From there we piled into a helicopter for a sky tour of, wait for it, the falls. From this vantage point you get a real sense of it's gargantuan scale. One of my favorite pics is this one of the Zambezi zigzagging the terrain with the mist rising up from the river. I wasn't really excited about going to Vic Falls in truth - I've been to Niagra and seen waterfalls in Hawaii and other places - but it is truly spectacular and I'm happy to have had the experience. From the air we saw hippos frolicking in their spot near Devil's pool and on the road back to our hotel we stopped to view a 4000 year old Baobob tree, found mainly in the savannas of Africa. Pretty cool stuff. Our days began very early to beat the heat of the day. We had afternoons free to swim, nap or whatever before activities began again in late afternoon.




This afternoon we had our first safari - on the back of an elephant. Safari elephants have been orphaned but are worked with and cared for by gentle human beings on a private sanctuary. Orphaned elephants, as you may not know, are dependent on a nurturing and attentive mother figure for their very survival. They are, however, still wild animals. My elephant was called Doma, a middle aged two ton tessy with little more than food on her mind. Elephants are herbivores and need to eat nearly 200 kilos/day. They like the sap inside the bark of trees and literally peel the bark from bottom to top of a 20 foot tree to get it. Branches are all fair game too as they wrap their trunks around them, give a good tug and shovel it into their mouth. They will even uproot a tree in search of the water beneath it.

Generally you ride two persons plus the guide on each elephant. But one of the elephants wasn't feeling well and there weren't enough available for our group when we arrived so I rode between two other girls. African elephants are so enormous that you have to practically do the splits to sit on them. I'm not that limber. But at least I was sandwiched. My poor girlfriend in the front was sitting on the "hump" and had my fingers in her crotch the whole time because the mandatory safety grip was underneath her. And the one in the back felt like she was teetering off Doma's rear end - bear in mind we were about one story high.

While we learned a lot and saw some incredible scenery the best animal viewing this time out was impala, water buck, tortoises, and dung beetles. Talk about fascinating. Dung beetles attack the elephant dung within minutes and start rolling it like snowballs. Then they dig a gopher hole in the earth and cram the dung ball down inside. The female comes along and burrows her eggs in the dung, the male fertilizes them and the dung becomes an incubator for the next generation.

Tea time in Africa is a serious affair; out come the cocktails and finger foods after every activity. There's nothing more refreshing than a bottle of Bollinger lager after traversing the bush on the rump of an elephant.