I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know about lions, elephants, and giraffes. Do you?  And I also can’t pinpoint just when I found out that there was a massive waterfall in Africa twice the size of Niagara Falls, though it was likely during a grade school Canadian geography lesson.  What did I do when I got the chance to be in my own real life episode of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom?  I made it happen! And I said ‘Wow!’ – a lot!  Here are just a few of those ‘Wow’ moments.

The Victoria Falls / Mosi-oa-Tunya*

Impression #1: The falls are magnificent.  It is a place that you can read about and even see in pictures and videos, but you can’t really grasp until you see it in person.  And you can’t actually fully see it from any single location. The park has a long walking path with over 18 viewing points in an effort to take it all in!  It first took my breath away (but I was eventually able to say Wow!)

Impression #2: Dr. Livingstone was a very lucky man.  When he went looking for the source of what he initially thought was smoke, but as he got closer sounded like thunder, he did so at a time when the water was low.  So when he came upon the falls, he was able to find safety on an island.  If the water had been high, that island would have been submerged in the river and he would have come upon, and gone over, the falls.

We too saw the falls when the water was low enough for the island to be visible, high enough for the curtain to be the full distance, and low enough that the power of the falls generated some spray to drench us when we got close to certain sections but not so much to obscure the falls entirely.  (I had been oblivious to the possibility of getting to the falls and not actually being able to see them because of the spray?!)

An Afternoon Walk to Zambia

In Cape Town, while having sundowners, a local contact casually described having afternoon tea at the Royal Livingstone Hotel watching zebras and giraffe wander the grounds.  Um, say what?!

When we got to Victoria Falls, the Royal Livingstone Hotel in Zambia was 5 km (3.1 miles) from our hotel, in Zimbabwe.  Motivated by the potential to see giraffe, here is how we covered that distance:
– 1.6 km.  We were picked up at our hotel in a van, and taken to Victoria Falls National Park for our guided tour (which was fabulous.)  After the tour, our driver took us as far as he could – to the exit point of Zimbabwe.  There our passports were stamped for leaving the country.
– 1.6 km. We walked through a “no man’s land” given we had left a country but not yet entered another?  This included walking over the Victoria Falls Bridge which is 128 m (420 feet) above the Zambezi River.  Many local men approached us asking if we were going bungee jumping – um, no.  Hard no.  And they all had some kind of jewelry or sculpture to sell us.  They asked where we were from, and would tell us their names, and intensely ask us to look for them on our return walk.  I couldn’t tell if they were Zimbabweans and Zambians, or perhaps they were a mix of both. I never felt crowded or pestered or scared.  I did though feel acutely aware of the vast gap in circumstances between my life and theirs, and I believed every story about a whole family being part of making the goods and every youth trying to save a little to eventually go to school as an example to his siblings.  Yet while my buying a bracelet may have had a short term impact, I didn’t want a bracelet; I wanted stronger institutions and infrastructure to lift everyone, yet I barely knew anything of the area’s history, politics, currency (or lack thereof), or the potential path to economic growth.  I felt uncomfortably foreign in so many ways.  Our ‘escorts’ drifted off as we reached the entry point of Zambia where our passports (with the appropriate visas) were stamped for entering a new country.
– 650 m.  We walked into Zambia.  It felt very weird to think, say, and do that.  And then new street traders were talking to us, and showing us pieces for sale made from copper – which was the metal that used to be the foundation of the country’s exports and economy.  And we again respectfully listened as they strode beside us, until we reached a large fenced property where the guards opened the gate and let us in.
– 1.2 km.  We said hello to the guards who, with quizzical looks, asked how they could help.  We had arrived at a campus with a few hotels, but this first one was not the Livingstone.  We explained that we had walked over from Zimbabwe (“Walked?!”), and had heard that there was possibly a shuttle that could take us to the Royal Livingstone.  They nodded, and gave us directions to their hotel’s lobby.  Once there, and once the shuttle was called, a truly amazing vehicle appeared.  It was larger than a golf cart, and smaller than a San Francisco trolley, yet a mashup of the two?!  The driver was happy to take us to the Royal Livingstone, but he wanted to know if we had seen the giraffes and zebras yet.  Given that we had not, he took it upon himself to take a route that went past them (I can only guess that staff exchange sightings all day for this purpose??) and he parked the shuttle/trolley/golf cart and we wandered closer to the giraffes for photos.  Wow!
At our destination, we pulled up to a lobby I will describe as ‘colonial lavish’.  Definitely comfortable, peaceful, serene, and an escape I could easily see suitable for the British royals and upper class of a previous era.  And we appreciated its beauty.  And followed directions to the restaurant by the river.  And saw tables on a dock on the river.  And sat there for a light lunch, followed by Zambian honey cake (delicious!), as we watched hippos in the distance in the river, and the spray of the falls floating up much like Livingstone himself would have seen it.

When we readied ourselves and began the journey back, we took another shuttle ride to the other hotel.  We walked to the big gate and met the guards again.  Then we got incredibly lucky!  Our hotel was part of a larger tour company, and the guards said that a van for that tour company had just come through and was likely to be returning – at which point it indeed drove up.  The guards didn’t open the gate, but rather, on our behalf, asked if the driver would consider giving us a ride!  He very kindly let us in, drove to the Zambian exit, took our passports to be stamped, drove over the bridge, and dropped us off at the Zimbabwe entrance.  Wow! That was a real gift on a hot day, and yet another example of the kindness of strangers when you take a moment to say hello.

What are we looking for?

I arrived in Africa associating the term ‘Big 5’ with some kind of ‘best of’ list, like the best five animals to see and photograph in the wild.  It seems that the African tourist industry has worked hard at creating that association and I was quite willing to buy into it.  I also later realized that I had extended this premise to assuming the animals were in some way hard to find, making a sighting a big deal.  And yet, on an early venture into ‘the wild’, we turned a corner and encountered an entire herd of Cape buffalo just hanging out by the road, and once I got a sense of scale for an elephant versus a tree, they too were frequently wandering nearby.  So I had to fix the false narrative I had randomly picked up. 

I asked multiple guides and I got a consistent answer about what the term ‘Big 5’ actually meant.  It was (and still is?) a hunting term.  Big game hunters developed the list to share with each other as a warning about dangerous animals, which of course then made those animals even more attractive to hunt.  When I listened to descriptions of how one of these animals, once wounded, would not run away but rather fight the hunter, basically until one of them died, I found myself always rooting for the animal.  The Cape buffalo in particular, when I heard it would ‘play dead’ for the hunter to approach closer as an ambush, got my full appreciation.

With this context, using the Big 5 as a metric for the success of a safari made no sense whatsoever to me, and even made me feel uneasy.  Two of my fellow travelers though had picture books (suitable for ages 3 to 103) with dozens of images, and those were delightfully better for getting us immersed and excited about a huge range of animal and bird sightings.  I very highly recommend this approach!

Now with all of that preamble – did we see:
– Cape buffalo? Yes, including babies.
– Elephants? Yes, including babies.
– Rhinos? Yes, one with its horn and one without.  (And the way our trackers found these two was incredibly impressive!)
– Leopards? No.  
– Lions? ….well…We had finished our first game drive in the morning, and we were driving back to our camp, when we took the last turn in the road, and ….  There were Simba and Nala just chilling, literally on the side of the road…. which was essentially our driveway.  WOW WOW WOW!  After that introduction, we saw them a few more times that afternoon and the next day, on various grassy knolls, as they, um, enjoyed making a baby lion ;).  How’s that for a Wild Kingdom episode!  And we saw the rest of the pride completely flaked out in a meadow, and we parked RIGHT NEXT TO THEM, and they could not have cared less.  Lions are pretty cool cats.
– Others? I saw a honey badger, and indeed, he did not care.  Also: crocodiles, hippopotamuses, giraffes, zebras, impala, hyenas, baboons, monkeys, water bucks, wart hogs, dung beetles, ostriches …. all wow!

Here are a few photos, but as I was spellbound by the movement of the animals, I’ve put together a short movie too. Enjoy!

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* Livingstone named the falls in honour of Queen Victoria, however, the indigenous Lozi language name for the falls is Mosi-oa-Tunya which means “The Smoke That Thunders.”