July 2

ROGER:
It is early morning on the 3rd, and since we do not have enough wood to get a fire going and hot water for tea, I guess I should update this while the others are getting their beauty rest. They will just have to suffer this morning when their tea is not ready! I was thinking about going to the Vic Falls Hotel veranda and watching the sunrise over the mist of the falls, but it doesn’t seem as safe to be walking alone in the dark, like it used to be – especially not here with all this country’s problems. It is sad to see this country in the condition it is. We could not find bread yesterday, there is no fuel in the entire town, and people are destitute for money that is worth something. With the world’s highest inflation rate (1700% was the last figure I heard), the money becomes worthless rather quickly. The 100,000 bills I have from here show an issue date of August, 2006, and an expiration date of July 31, 2007. I never saw money printed like that before, and don’t know what it means, but it is printed right on the currency. The black market rate here is many times more than the official bank rate. The shops have clothing and the store had canned goods, but it is priced way beyond the means of the people living here. This used to be a very reasonable place to come for vacation, but now the government is charging for everything, and it must be paid in US Dollars. Visas, vehicle carbon tax, Vic falls entry fees, tax on white water rafting etc. It gets expensive very quickly. Zambia also charges entry fees now, and vehicle taxes, but they are not quite as high as Zimbabwe.
Anyway I guess I digress. I was supposed to write about yesterday. As usual yesterday we got up and after getting everybody awakened fully enough to function in a somewhat normal capacity, we headed out walking. We are in the middle of town, and the town is very small, so we can get everywhere we need to by walking. We did our research and found the entry fee now to see the falls is USD20.00 per person, and that is only for a single entry. It is full moon tonight and the falls are lovely to view at full moon with the rainbows etc, so we thought we would wait until later in the afternoon and go in, have a picnic there, and then stay until the moon was up and view the falls in the moonlight. We went to the white water raft companies, and after some research and discussion with three different ones, signed up with one. They seemed to be a bit more "local" and in the end gave us the best deal. They made me a "guide" so I could go free – whatever works. Renae was a bit worried and most of them have age limits (which would have left Lisa nd Renae behind), but they said we could all go. We even got Jolene persuaded to go in a separate boat that they promised would not capsize. She was planning on staying back – not really interested in experiencing the great Zambezi River in such an intimate way – it is considered the best commercial white water rafting in the world. Renae is going to start in that boat also to see how it goes at the beginning, and then can come over for the wild ride later if she wants. I did ask when the last time somebody died rafting was, but I won’t bore you with those details. We didn’t have to sign our lives away like I had to last time I did this, but that will probably happen in the morning before we leave – or else the "local" outfit just isn’t worried about liability – which is more likely.
We then walked across the bridge to the Zambia side, but since it was a holiday we did not see the zip lines, bridge swinging and bungee jumping – it was closed. Some wanted to go into Zambia, and some didn’t think we should spend the money for visas, so we split up and Travis, Erin, and Nicole decided they would like to hike to the bottom of the gorge, which can be done from "no mans land" before clearing into Zambia. One of them can write about that, but they had a great time. Jolene, Lisa, Renae, and I went into Zambia and had lunch at the hotel close to the falls. It was all changed, and we could not eat along the river like we used to years ago, which was disappointing. We decided we didn’t have enough time to view the falls from the Zambian side, hit the curio shops that Renae loves and still be back to meet the others at the agreed 1600 meeting time at the Zimbabwean falls entry gate. On the way back I got into a very interesting discussion with a Zimbabwean about the current woes of Zimbabwe. He used to be a tour guide, but now walked across to Zambia everyday with his allotment of beer (about $2.50 USD) to sell on the Zambian side. He goes over every morning and gets back about 1400, walking the entire time. He said many Zimbabweans do that, and most of the people we see with bags are doing that every day. Beer is cheaper and better in Zimbabwe, than in Zambia, and that is how he currently supports himself and his family. Talking about Mugabe and the current situation was interesting. When I asked how he could feel comfortable saying the things he was on the street, he said he knew all the CID’s and secret police around Vic Falls, and could talk to me as long as he saw none were overhearing him.
We did go to the local curio market, which is a very interesting place and then returned to the entrance to meet the others, only to discover we did not do enough research. We had to be back out at 1800, and then could go in to view the falls by moonlight later (from 1930 to 2030), but it would cost us an dditional $30.00 per person. That was more than we thought it was worth, and since the 3 hikers went to the camp for a bite to eat and forgot about the time (so they said), they didn’t get there until 1615 and that would only have given us one hour and forty-five minutes to spend at the falls. We were planning on getting back to Botswana the next day, after the rafting trip, but since we didn’t even get the falls viewing done, we decided we better spend another day here. It’s good we don’t have a set plan – hey it’s Africa – it’s best if one just goes with the flow here anyway.
We did go to the Vic Falls Hotel and viewed the falls and the bridge from their grounds, hit the curio shop for those who did not see it before, and then went back to camp and made our meal. There are four VERY serous "journalers" here (sometimes it seems that is all they do), so they spent the evening getting their journals up and we all went to bed early to get ready for our big white water raft trip tomorrow.

Roger