From Victoria Falls to the Skeleton Coast – Day 2: Blundering through Livingstone

On Saturday morning, we crossed the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. Our hotel was only about half an hour from the crossing, so we decided to walk, which was not too difficult with my light luggage thanks to the decent road. Baboons welcomed visitors to the Zimbabwean customs office – the first wildlife encounter of many that day. They used the electricity pole to descend from the roof of the building to the ground, where they would strut and insouciantly collect trash like partly eaten corn cobs from passersby.

We were only given a short form to fill in at the window, after which we were let out onto the path to the bridge. Walking it took longer than expected. There were quite a few food sellers on the road, and I wondered half-seriously whether buying from them would count as a duty-free purchase. There were also taxis offering to ferry tourists from one border post to the other, but I thought taking it a bit of a waste, as I was looking forward to walking the bridge with the waterfalls on one side and the deep gorge on the other. This expectation was met, though the actual experience rattled me. I almost fancied myself more afraid than the insane bungee jumpers whenever a big truck passed by, making the entire bridge shake and sway.

Once we made it to the other side, the Zambian border post was not too far away. There was no visa fee to pay and very few formalities to work out, so we walked through quite quickly. As we would soon find out, this was the easy part. The difficult part was finding the entrance to the Zambian side of the Victoria Falls Park (locally called Mosi-oa-Tunya, or “Thundering Smoke”). The first path leading towards the park had a big sign saying, “exit only,” but as we walked on, we found no entrance. Walking farther, we passed by the closed gate to the parking lot, and we were in turn passed by cab drivers who took it upon themselves to dissuade us from walking all the way to Livingstone.

Eventually, we reached the gate of a hotel. We explained our predicament to the guard and asked for directions, which did not seem to correspond to his hand gestures as he pointed about in contradictory ways. When he saw us turning back again, the guard took pity and guided us into the compound: it turns out Zambia has authorised several hotels to be set up in the park itself, and these hotels have direct access to the guard post of the falls. Much to our surprise, the hotels were beset by wild animals. Walking inside, we passed just a few metres away from several giraffes. They seemed to be attracted to the hotel by the green leaves of the constantly watered trees, which stood out among the barren vegetation of the dry season. Closer to the guard post, we also walked through a troop of baboons.

Having no change for the exact ticket price, we left the guard with a slightly heftier tip than we had originally intended and spent a little extra on bribing the other guard to keep our luggage while we walked around. I was at once embarrassed and grateful when the amused guard returned a 100 dollar note to me, which I had accidentally grabbed along with another one dollar note. With that, we finally made it into the park at around eleven o’clock.

Many travellers turn their noses up at the Zambian side of the Victoria Falls, as it covers only about twenty per cent of the total site. However, I would say the views are just as good as the views on the Zimbabwean side, and the experience is – for better or for worse – even more immersive. Having prepared a plastic bag after yesterday’s drenching experience, I put away my shoes and socks and walked barefoot into the splash zone, where my fears were immediately proved right. We were misted as soon as we descended the steps and mercilessly showered when we decided to cross the pedestrian bridge onto the outcrop directly opposite of the falls. The drier, downstream side of the outcrop offers good views of the 1905 Victoria Falls Bridge, showing clearly how precipitous the fall from the top would be.

At the parking lot just outside the guard post, we found a driver who took us to Livingstone for a reasonable price. As though it were the most uninteresting sight, he did not break pace at all as we passed a whole troop of elephants munching on the trees right by the roadside. We passed also passed several more baboons, but by that time even we thought they hardly merited a comment.

After leaving our bags at our hotel and eating lunch nearby, we made a small tour of the city. As far as I know, there are not that many things to do in Livingstone. The city has a few museums, the most highly rated among them being the Livingstone Museum. There is also a Railway Museum, but it is quite poorly rated for reasons that became apparent even before we entered: behind the often entirely crumbled walls, the overgrown grass covered what seemed to be a children’s playground scattered among several beautiful but rather derelict trains. When we entered, there was no one to receive us. The receptionist only appeared a minute or two after we wandered in, having spotted us from across the road. The price she quoted us was fifteen dollars per person, which we found so absurd that we turned around and left.

The Livingstone Museum was more reasonably priced at five dollars per head, and its exhibits were far more varied. The tour begins in the palaeolithic and continues with an excursion into Botswana’s wildlife: there are a number of taxidermized animals in glass terraria replicating their respective natural habitats. One particularly prominent item on display is the skull of a dicynodont, an ancient herbivore that used to roam Zambia’s plains. The tour then continues with a replica of a Zambian village and some cultural artefacts including dark magic paraphernalia, and finally leads to the historical wing, where an entire room is dedicated to objects associated with David Livingstone. One glass exhibit also contains the bust and books of Czech explorer Emil Holub, the first European to make an accurate map of the Victoria Falls.

We spent much of the day fretting about how to get change in US Dollars, as our supply of small bills was running low. At the same time, our itinerary would take us to Botswana the very next day and to Namibia two days later, so we did not want to exchange a whole one-hundred-dollar bill into any of the local currencies. We tried to break our bills at the Zambian entrance to the falls, at the restaurant where we ate lunch, and at our hotel with no success. At the museum, the receptionist barely scraped together ten dollars to exchange for our twenty-dollar bill. We breathed a sigh of relief, therefore, when our server at dinner replied that she would be able to give us our change in dollars. Navigating the vicissitudes of the next few days suddenly promised to become much easier.