The contrast between the two sets of Falls was mind-boggling. The one was splendid in all its natural beauty, and the other was a glitzy tourist spot. We didn’t like all the tourist traps around Niagara, though we appreciated the People Mover transit system, which enabled us to park our car and travel up to 30kms, hopping on and off at various stops along the Niagara Parkway. We didn’t regret our road trip, because it was still fascinating to see the Niagara Falls, to take a boat ride to the foot of the falls, to walk through the tunnel behind the cascading waters, none of which was possible at the Victoria Falls. We also enjoyed watching an Imax movie instructing us in the history of the region. Thus, we heard fascinating Indigenous legends and heard about the exploits of the Frenchman Blondin, who first walked a tightrope across the Falls in 1859, repeating this exploit several times, once with a passenger on his back. We learned of those brave (or foolhardy!) adventurers who attempted to ride the falls in barrels and canoes, some losing their lives in the attempt. No way would I ever wish to try such an exploit! I had to admit, though, that the falls looked beautiful when illuminated at nighttime. They were coloured in blue, red, yellow, and green, all of which changed at random. So pretty.
To my surprise, I survived the trip to Wankie Game Reserve, and didn’t react negatively when we saw elephants, giraffe, and other wild animals. I even took photos of them on my recently acquired and much-loved Kodak Instamatic camera. It had been given to me as a surprise gift at Christmas by my uncle in London. He was well off with, his own business, and I suppose he was shocked to notice that I had only picture postcards to show him of my life in France. No photographs because I couldn’t afford to buy a camera.
I decided that my adapting to a safari-type trip was because I was much older and wiser on this latest trip to Wankie. I enjoyed seeing the Falls again, too, watching the trains travelling across the large steel Victoria Falls Bridge which arched across a gorge. We stayed in the small town of Livingstone on the Zambian side of the border, and I think came back home via Malawi. I can’t remember this part of our trip.
We all knew that we didn’t have time during John’s short stay to include another visit to the Zimbabwe ruins, which would have meant heading back to Salisbury and then south-west further still to Bulawayo and Fort Victoria, several hundred miles from Salisbury. Zimbabwe was and still is an enormous stone complex rather like a fort. I thought that the ruins were awe-inspiring, not only because of their size, but also because they were built in the middle of the bush. We were all impressed by their heavy square stones erected without mortar, forming high walls, conical towers, and steep staircases, all for no apparent reason. We had been fascinated by the stylized carving on the walls of the Zimbabwe bird, and we children ran around trying to find more of them. No-one knows who built the Zimbabwe complex. The right-wing government of Ian Smith had refused to believe that Africans of past centuries could have been capable of such an architectural feat, insisting, instead, that the ruins must have been built by Arab traders from much further north, though, as far as I can recall, there is no evidence of this.
