Welcome To Africa: A Breath Of Fresh Air

We left congested, hot, polluted Mumbai, held up for hours at the airport in a net of Indian bureaucracy. We stepped off the plane in Livingstone, Zambia to fresh air, wide open spaces, and a limitless blue sky. Jordan and I both took huge, gulping breaths on the tarmac before proceeding through the hut that is Zambian Immigration. For us, Africa was literally a breath of fresh air.

We spent nearly a month traveling through Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia before finally arriving in Cape Town, South Africa. We’ve got lots to share about our time in Africa, but it’s hard to overstate how good our first impression was.

It didn’t hurt that we kicked it off with the mighty Victoria Falls. The local name is Mosi-oa-Tunya, literally “The Smoke That Thunders.” What a fitting name. When we flew in, the “smoke” rising from the immense gorge was the defining feature of the landscape. And the sound — we could hear the deep, sonorous rumbling of the falls from our campsite 4 kilometres away! People overuse the words “epic” and “amazing,” but Vic Falls is rightly deserving of both. When you multiply height by width, it’s the largest waterfall in the world!

Victoria Falls - Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe — Think this is impressive? This stretches for a half mile in either direction.

Victoria Falls - Livingstone, Zambia — We got soaked!

Victoria Falls straddles the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. It also marked our most memorable border crossing yet, walking on the century-old Victoria Falls Bridge over the Zambezi river, collecting the spray from the falls, monkeys scampering all over the place.

The bridge is a really popular place for bungee jumps and bridge swings. Not my thing under normal circumstances, but this bridge doesn’t have the best safety record. Check out this video of an Australian tourist’s bungee cord snapping a couple years ago.

A more civilized pleasure: high tea at the grand old Victoria Falls Hotel. Even better was overhearing conversations like this:

Man with sophisticated British accent: So what brings you to Africa?

American woman: I got drunk at a charity auction and bought a safari. My husband was so pissed I brought my sister along instead of him.

We also loved the food, the music, and the kind people we met in our first few days. After she caught me eying her lunch, Jan, the lady working the Vic Falls gift shop, gave Jordan and I some of her food! She was eating nshima, one term for what we would learn is a staple food in Southern Africa. It’s basically a maize-meal (cornmeal) “porridge” that has the clumpy, tactile consistency of day-old grits. You use it to scoop up stews and veggies, like Jan did.

The next day we climbed on our truck and started a journey that would include vast savannahs, African chiefs, barren deserts and charging rhinos, all the way to Cape Town!