There are few things as strange as waking up in Africa for the first time! We walked out of our room and all over the grounds there were monkeys, zebras, and giraffes milling around.
We went and had a big breakfast with fresh squeezed OJ (a staple for us over the next few days), coffee, and African Red Tea. The food was really good, but also interesting. You could tell that they were trying to cook western food, but it was always just slightly different than we expected.
I'll attack the next few days' activities a couple of days at a time because in all honesty, a lot of it was a blur at first while we were adjusting to the climate and time difference.
The first day we went to get a peek at the Falls. The hotel we stayed in was on the National Park grounds, so we had easy walking access to the trails that go around Victoria Falls. As we approached it on foot for the first time, we started to understand why people had raincoats on. We were able to see only about 5% of the falls without getting soaked (including the camera). We snapped some pics and decided to come back at a time that we were more prepared to get drenched.
The really strange thing about the Falls is that you can stand directly accross from it, so all the spray is coming right at you! I'll share more about that later in the post.
We decided since we had the camera with us that we would just hike around and see what we could see. A nice Zambian park worker offered to guide us down to the Boiling Pot, 400 ft below. As we decended it got more and more humid. Zambia at that time of year is in winter, but with the 24/7/365 mist from the falls, the area is more like a rainforest than savanna.
When we finally reached the bottom we saw where the entire water fall converged and continued the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The hike back up was tiring because we were drenched from sweat caused by the humidity (and our lack of fitness). When we got back up top we showered up and rested.
We had a lot of opportunity to read while we were there, and I'm very thankful for the opportunity to rest and prepare our hearts and minds for the work we would be doing. One of the books I read was Bruchko by Bruce Olson. This book was very empowering because it tells the story of a 19 year old kid who felt the Lord call him to walk blindly into South America to find a murderous tribe called the Motilones. The story of his time there is riddled with what we would assume are mistakes and bad signs, but the Lord used Bruce's willingness to do His work, and God was glorified because of it. Great read, pick it up!
The next post will be about our river and land safari in Botswana on and around the Chobe river.
