We said goodbye to Botswana and headed to the Zimbabwean border, where we spent the next thirty minutes being harassed for some paperwork that we weren’t quite sure that we needed to get the rental car into the country. After speaking with the rental company a few days later, it turns out that we did need the paperwork and got it for a good price! It goes to show that sometimes, what you might think to be a rip off, swindle, daylight robbery, might actually be exactly what you need. It would help if the guys in question looked somewhat professional, but my ways are not your ways, saith the Zimbabweans at the border, and this was another case of having to go with the flow!
After passing through the border with our new shiny visas, we were off to the falls. Between the border and the falls is the middle of nowhere (luckily we could check this off the bucket list). The bush was thick and formed kind of a roofless tunnel through western Zimbabwe. We did see about seven or eight elephant before the bush got thick, but we had seen so many in Botswana that we didn't even stop for a picture. Plus we were about to ride one. Spoilt, we know.
We checked in to Victoria Falls Backpackers, which is really nice by the way, highly recommended, and then headed off to see the Zimbabwean side of Victoria Falls. We wont repeat all of the statistics here, but suffice to say, the same falls looked even better from the Zimbabwean side. In fact, concerning the falls, David Livingstone is quoted: “Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.” We went from look out point to look out point, and admired the different angles and different sections that were visible. It was almost like seeing different places from each point because of the mist and rainbows.
Towards the middle of the falls we got soaked again, probably even more than we did on the Zambian side. The mist was more like a heavy rain, and we got pelted! Alastair even gave Laleinia the unopened but well-traveled Walmart rain poncho that he had in his bag. The rainbows formed from the mist were great also, they were almost non-existent or really faint when the sun was behind a cloud, but got brighter and brighter as the sun came out until they were really vivid. Mum put it best: “The rainbows almost get in the way.”
We happily trudged along from look out point to look out point until we reached the fifteenth one, which was just a gorge away from where we ended up after traversing Knife Edge Bridge in Zambia. For some reason, Alastair felt like he had just summited a peak or something, like a true adventurer with his backpack on. We even got photos as if we had just arrived at the top of Everest, wrapped up in the moment we suppose. Seeing a flip-flop clad guy carrying his baby, and glancing at a Chinese family in their yellow anoraks helped us to quickly catch ourselves and get a grip of reality, but it didn't take away from our pleasure of having seen Victoria Falls from both sides! Fantastic day!