In the Presence of Angels

On to Zambia.

This morning we awoke (actually, I awoke, Sanjay never slept having blogged and uploaded photos all night) around 4:30am. We were picked up by the nicest taxi driver ever (actually, there seem to be alot of those in Cape Town) who pointed out the sights as we took the 20-minute ride to the airport. In particular, he introduced us to Stinky Towers, 2 broken down old power towers outside of town that are across the street from a sanitation plant - thus the name. He looked like Josh, and called us "lucky buggers" as we described the rest of our itinerary to him.

We boarded our plane to Johannesburg without incident, and once there we shopped for a couple of minutes during our layover. We both got flip flops in preparation for our Tanzania bucket showers, and I got sunglasses for safari, since I seem to have lost my superstar Prada pair.

From Johannesburg, we caught our flight to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe on British Airways. This is an airline that takes its carry-on rules seriously and, even though they would have easily fit, they took our carry-on bags which include our necessities and expensive items like Sanjay's insanely awesome camera. There was a moment of terror as we were, after all, flying into Zimbabwe, and we had no idea what might happen to our checked luggage, let alone the bare necessities we'd crammed into our carry-ons. As it turns out, the fear was unnecessary (as most of my fears seem to have been so far), because our bags were waiting at the bottom of the stairs when we disembarked. (Another unnecessary fear was the weather - though wunderground had prophesied thunderstorms at Victoria Falls, the skies were clear, blue and beautiful.)

Waiting for us at the airport was Roy, a very friendly Zimbabwean tour guide, who was prepared to take us directly to our lodge in Zambia, Tongabezi. That was, until he suggested that we could get a better view of Victoria Falls from Zimbabwe than from Zambia. As soon as he did, Sanjay and I both looked at our passports to realize we had only a double entry visa (which meant we could only come back to the country to catch our outbound flight). So, if we wanted to see the falls from Zimbabwe, it had to be today. So we asked Roy to make a quick diversion to the falls, which he gladly did.

Victoria Falls was incredible. I don't have language to describe it, so I'll let the photos speak for themselves. Suffice it to say there were two rainbows (Ashlee-"it's a double, it's a double"), and butterflies everywhere. Angels were present. (For those of you who don't know, at my brother's wake, there were two rainbows in the sky and, shortly after his death, there was an infestation of butterflies on my mom's back porch. Since then, these two signs let me know he's around. He seems to be whenever I travel :) The scale and magnitude of the falls cannot be fully grasped from the photo - there are literally almost 2 miles of continuous, powerful waterfalls.

After our quick tour, we comtinued our drive toward Zambia. We saw several locals carrying items on their heads, and a young boy, maybe 12, sweating profusely as he diligently pushed a cart full of what looked to be equal to 25 10-pound bags of potatoes up the middle of the road.

Finally, we headed across the Zimbabwe border again, despite everything I'd prepared myself for, without incident - and then into Zambia to Tongabezi. At the border, we did see a troop of baboons, including several baby baboons, as well as some vervet monkies. They were literally no more than 10 feet from our car!

Tongabezi is heaven. It has a quiet and serenity I don't think I've ever experienced. Our small cabin, which is open via screened enclosure, opens onto the banks of the Zambezi river - where hippos play and crocodiles lie in wait. We were assigned a valet, Given, upon our arrival, who takes care of whatever we need - from drinks to laundry to scheduling activities. He is a kind little man who goes out of his way to be helpful.

To end the day, we ate outside on a terrace facing the Zambezi, serenaded by a choir of local voices. The meal was very western (I had pork loin and potatoes), with one dish - I think called nshashi - or something like that - that's a ground corn meal - almost a cross between polenta and grits. Interesting. We started with a very yummy soup though made of fresh tomatoes and ginger.

Well, I suppose that's it for tonight - I'm still fighting off Sanjay's plague. Keep reading - tomorrow's our first game drive - you never know what we might see . . .

PS - Ashlee, in response to your comment, we managed to catch a couple minutes of the Carnival parade as it passed by the District Six museum. The level of revelry, and the costumes and dancing were the same as the competition the day before, so fear not - we caught what we needed.