The Falls
The second day was all planned out for us. First, we had some breakfast in the hotel, complimentary with eggs made to order, they had a great variety of juices including guava, which is one of my favorite juices. After a successful meal, we geared up to head out to Victoria Falls National Park. It was about a 10–15-minute walk from the town which would seem nice if it wasn’t for all the hawkers and peddlers trying to sell us money for nearly the entire walk. But once we got to the highway, we started running into the crowd of people waiting to get into the park and the peddlers gave up on us to prey on some other tourists.
It took a while to get processed into the park but once in and set free, it’s like a different ecosystem entirely. Unlike the surrounding savanna, the sheer amount of water in the air coming off the falls make a mountainous jungle. The entrance is on the west end of the falls, so we checked out that area first which had a beautiful vista where you walk down steps looking at what they call the Devil’s Cataract. I’ll leave it to you to look up why it has that name but trust me it is entertaining. The Cataract was the smallest part of the falls, which it does not seem like. It’s separated from the main part of the falls by an island called Cataract Island which looks nuts to see an island in the middle of a waterfall.
We went back towards the entrance to walk the rest of the path the other way, which is the main part of the park and the falls and goes for just about a mile. Along that trail there are numerous vistas where you can see different parts of the falls and every single one was beautiful. The few more towards the middle of the falls were my favorite because you could see so much of the falls, and it was so large that my entire field of view was pure waterfall.
Because of all the water in the air due to the scale of Victoria Falls, most of these vistas were getting intermittently showered upon, so there was a large amount of people with ponchos and umbrellas. My mother and I had an umbrella which for me was preferable but let me tell you, it was impossible not to get wet. I also found out that day that I had a hole in my shoe. I realized this when I stepped in a huge puddle and felt my sock get drenched which, as I’m sure many of you can relate, is not a pleasant experience. However, I was seeing one of the Natural Wonders of the World for my first time, so no wet sock could rain on my parade (heh). If anything, it just makes for a better story and I was so high on life nothing could bring me down, which is common for me when traveling.
It really was amazing and honestly a lot of fun trying to see through to the other side through all the mist to try and make out what laid at the top of the waterfall.
