Chapter 44 - Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe was a crazy experience. It's the first country I've visited with a failing economy. This place is dropping like a rock. It's a long story, but I'll try to give a quick intro because I never heard anything about Zim back home. Their President, Robert Mugabe, is a Marxist who believes in returning the land and power back to the black population of Zimbabwe. In the 1990s his government took away most farms from white people and eventually awarded them to many lucky black families. The whites left the country and took their skills and capital with them. Along with the economic sanctions from the US and UK, the national production in Zim started to drop, and the value of the Zim dollar dropped, leading to inflation, poverty, and unemployment. The whole country is barely earning enough to survive, except those who are rich and politically connected.
When most people travel through Southern Africa these days, Zimbabwe is the country they avoid. So I met up with two new girls, Amy (UK) and Carissa (She-Kaw-Go) and headed for South Africa's most destitute country. The road north to Zimbabwe started out great, but gradually degraded with every day. We drove out of Cape Town with a this very generous South Africa friend, Jan (Yan), who drove us all the way north to Pretoria. The first 12 hours on a bus got us to Gaborone, Botswana. Another 12 bus-hours brought us north to Francistown......then a third day of sitting on a bus got us accross the border into Zimbabwe, and the ghost town of Bulwayo.

This is the thriving metropolis of Bulwayo. It seemed like a ghost town. There are wide avenues and developed urban neighborhoods, but very few cars on the road. Nobody can afford gasoline.

I don't have any more of Bulwayo pictures because I was too nervous to go running around with my camera out. Even on the first day in Zimbabwe, I remember feeling the collective depression of the people. Our first challenge was getting our money changed for local currency. Here is the biggest hassle that travelers deal with in Zimbabwe. The dictator, Mr. Mugabe, forces the banks (and all ATM machines) to keep the exchange rate at $1 = $250-zim. On the black market, you change $1-US for $2500-zim dollars. A can of coke cost about 1200 zim dollars, so if you listen to Mugabe, a Coke cost $6, but in reality it's only 50 cents. Rather than go to an ATM like in every other country, in Zimbabwe you get a real adventure. It's a delight to experience the shadiness of the black market money changers. It made us feel like we were scoring drugs, or guns, or hookers carrying guns. Luckily we never got robbed or arrested.

From Bulawayo we took another full day of travel in a Combi-Taxi brought us to Victoria Falls. A "combi" looks similar to the old Volkswagen hippy vans, but with 35 sweaty people crammed inside. When we finally got to Vic Falls I was deliriously tired. This is a picture of me washing off four days of sweat and smell and aching muscles from the ordeal.

So these are the Victoria Falls. They really are amazing. The Zambezi seems as large as the Mississippi, and at the falls is drops into a whole in the earth about 1000 feet down. They say that sometimes a dead Hippo floats over the edge and explodes at the bottom. The mist sprays everywhere and there is a rainbow in the canyon. It alright but I'd rather see an exploded Hippo. This is Amy and Carissa, my two bodyguards.

So that's Victoria Falls.

Next stop, The Zimbabwean capital city, Harare.