Victoria falls, by helicopter

Using the logic that I may only go to Africa once in my life, I splurged and took a helicopter ride over Victoria Falls. As we were leaving town, it was so obvious that it was the dry season.
The river just drops off into this gigantic crack in the earth. What I never knew was how many cracks there were.

The falls are something like 1.7 km wide

More rainbows

I really was enamored by the gorges after the falls

We are flying over Zimbabwean airspace right now. Most of the falls actually lie on the Zimbabwe side.

See how the earth is just split by these amazing gorges?

If you see the little point on the right, just above the bridge, that is the Zambian side of the falls. Just put my pictures from the previous post into your mind to get an idea of scale.

A little scary?

Pretty amazing that that gigantic mellow river condenses down to this tiny maelstrom

Our pilot. Never did learn his name because they just shuttled us in and out so fast.

The river before the falls

The big island above the falls (can't remember the name at the moment)

Livingstone from the air

Ah, back on safe ground. An expensive 15 minutes, but pretty spectacular.

Zambian animals

When I got to my second hotel in Livingstone, I was greeted by the sight of a whole herd of elephants coming down to the Marumba river for a drink.

It was pretty spectacular to watch.

Can you count them? I think more than 20 were there at one time.

Later, Ashraf, the owner of (or son of the owner of) Kaazmein Lodge came back to pick me up and take me on a little tour of the local area. He had the day off, and I guess had nothing better to do then spend the day taking some tourist around. Hey, I was happy.

The first thing we saw once we entered the national park as this hippo. It was very hot, and this guy did not look too good. We were pretty sure he was on his way out since hippos don't really leave the water in the heat of the day. Poor guy.

Impala ladies Waterbuck

More impala. I thought these were so pretty. Everything else loves them too, yum, dinner.

Baby giraffe

Ashraf loved to make the giraffes run.

It was pretty cool being able to see these animals with just Ashraf to share it with. From my later experiences being crammed into a big truck with cameras beeping and being shoved in my face, I really came to appreciate this simple experience.

Zambezi River

I took a little sunset river cruise on the Zambezi river above the falls on my second night. They recommend you stay on the boat, ha. There were some really neat birds. I believe this is an African Darter and some egrets.
Papyrus!

An Egyptian goose

Another Darter

We saw a lot of hippos on this cruise, but I swear they could tell when a camera was pointed at them. They would be hanging out, heads out of the water for ages. Then, when you would point your camera, this is the picture you would get. The shwoop as the water closed over their head. Ha! Monitor lizards

It was very pretty.

As the sun set, we came across a family of elephants by the river's edge.

For the potty minded people out there, this picture is hilarious

Again, no justice to the sunset, but I like the pictures anyways.

I was on a boat similar to this one.

Zambian locals

I stayed in a place called Kaazmein Lodge. My travel agent totally ripped me off when he set me up in this place, telling me it was way cheaper than my other options. Ha! The good thing about it was that instead of a bunch of European and Australian tourists, this place was mostly populated by rich Zambians from the capital. So, I got to talk to relatively local people during breakfast, and the hotel staff took pity on me and we had some pretty interesting conversations. It turned out to be the most interaction I would have with local people for the rest of the trip, so I guess it was worth the ripping off.
Quite a fancy place, no? My room is the bottom left.

I was later wandering around the town, and fought my way through the curio market. I purposefully didn't have any money at the time, but people are pretty insistent. The fun thing was, once you convinced them you weren't going to buy, and if you showed some real interest in them, they were super friendly. This young man, Dickson, found out I teach biology and got very excited. He wants to be a doctor someday. When he found out I was interested in trying local food, he invited me to lunch.

I risked my life a little with this meal, you can't see, but it was absolutely filthy around here. The mush is made of maize and called Nshima (or pap in South Africa). You roll a ball up in your hand and dip it in the sauce. It was actually rather good.

I had told Trevor the same thing about my interest in local cuisine, and so he made plans for the evening. Of course, I couldn't tell him that Dickson beat him, but it was fun. Trevor kept my American sensibilities in mind and took me to a more touristy place. The food was comparable, and 3x as expensive. Fun music and dancing though.