8 / 1 / 2009

Let’s see, its Saturday. What did YOU do? This last week I was working with FK to facilitate changes to a major component of the WBR bicycle. But something bigger came up. This weekend I am in Victoria Falls with Dan and Jack. This is something I wanted to do earlier in the month, but was glad to wait until the two gentlemen were free to come as well.

We left early Friday morning, taking a cab to the bus station. An interestingly early morning since we spent the night before at a local tavern. By local, I do mean local, we were the only three “mazungos” there. We caught quite a few looks, the young gentlemen certainly more than me. Jack was especially popular; he has spent the last week or two singing with a local Anglican choir, has picked up on some of the local language and could sing along with many of the most popular hits. Kennedy, one of the WBR drivers was our host, along with his brother Teddy – I kid you not. I was the only one to notice those few who didn’t appreciate our presence, and only because that’s what I do. By and large, the dense crowd was bemused to see us there, and were gracious with many hand shakes and warm smiles. The girls were numerous, attractive and in my world – very young. I have been struck, since my arrival, at the uncommon beauty of the local women. As a group they are proud, happy, svelte, very alive and animated.

By 2AM we were on our way home to find that none of us had prepared for the weekend trip. I had to stay up an extra hour to pack and to send a last few emails, thoughts and spreadsheets to FK. Two and one-half hours later I was up, getting ready for the trip. I felt much too paternal, and acted too muck like my father waking my two house-mates. Which was only a foreshadowing of events to come. We climbed into the cab and proceeded to the bus station. WHAT a scene! As we enter the station we are beset by 10 criers demanding that we accompany them to Ndola, Chipata, Kenya, Churundu, anywhere and everywhere. They leaped at the cab displaying signs for each destination, as if we had no idea where to go, and needed a concrete sales pitch to make up our minds. After a month in Zambia, this is only slightly abnormal, so we ignore them all and find the coach headed to Victoria Falls. After purchasing our tickets ($16 one way for the 6 hour ride) we climb on board to find our seats. I think we are on the kid’s bus – the seats are small. As the oldest I claim the window seat, a place to make my nest and get comfortable. I let the other two figure it out for themselves. Dan will be taking Ambien, so I encourage him to take the center seat – he’ll be immune to any jostling from Jack or me.

The bus stops three times on the way to Victoria Falls, we get off once to eat. When we arrive it’s the same scene we left in Lusaka, just a smaller scale of cabbies vying for a fare. After so many hours in a crowded bus, we elect to walk to our hostel – the Fawlty Towers (oh do I wish I had taken a picture!). We quickly collect ourselves and head out to the falls.

Words do no justice here – you’ll just have to see this event for yourselves. The 7 natural wonders include the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, the Grand Canyon, the Northern Lights, Mount Everest, the harbor at Rio de Janeiro, the Paricutin volcano in Mexico and Victoria Falls. I have seen three so far from the air, and after seeing the fourth I must admit they are wonderous because only from the air can you see the sheer scale of the event. Victoria Falls can not be captured in a single frame, or a single moment or a single sound. At once it reverberates across your senses as a crescendo, and is also found in the quiet solitude of the rainforest growing in the mist (where I found myself feeling like home, touring Pt Defiance). It is a torrent of water a mile wide and 4oo feet high, but is also a placid lake that rests above the chasm. It presents a constant rainbow in one direction and an opaque mist rising like rain from the earth in the other. Each of us are immediately enamored and rush from one viewpoint to another in a vain attempt to capture it all.

Guess what – I only took one camera. I could not hope to capture any aspect of the falls in the instant digital, so you’ll have to wait for Scancafe© to transfer the photos I do have. Rest assured they will not compare to the numerous photos available here:

http://images.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=victoria%20falls&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi

As we view the falls, from some aspects we can see a bridge that spans a valley that at one time, millennia ago, held a portion of the falls we see today. From that bridge there are people jumping, well, its bungee. Years ago when I was traversing the states on the back of a motorcycle I was determined to something similar, but never found the opportunity.

After seeing the falls up close we return to the hostel where we find several young British women very concerned that they are sharing ‘their’ area of the hotel with three strange men. I find the whole thing very humorous, and leave them to go downstairs for a drink with the hostel manager, his wife and several of their friends swapping stories by the pool. In the morning I wake but it’s not my alarm. The walls of the hostel are thin, at first I assume that one of the British gals is not quite as proper as she first let on. Then I realize the sounds of estrous are emanating from the other direction. In fact, if it weren’t for the wall, I’d probably be a participant; the sounds are uncomfortably close. After some reflection I determine that this is not a good way to wake up in the morning. So I get up to prepare for the events of the day.

Dan, Jack and I, collect downstairs for the 8AM bus to the falls. We are going white water rafting! On a coincidental note, I recently contacted an old friend on Facebook. Constance described her recent trip to south Africa and told me how great the Zambezi river rafting was, just four months earlier. So now we are off on the same adventure.

The van stops and we stand for a rather presumptive safety briefing and then don our rafting gear and head down the steep embankment for the river and the rafts. Since the three of us represent almost all the mature testosterone in the group of 50 sightseers (British school boys, two families and a very few young ladies), we are quite popular with the guides, each vying for us to join their group. We sign up with a pair of gentlemen. One uses a kayak, his face is covered in scars from years of work in white water. He tells us of the many awards he has won as a champion in the sport. The other, Vector, guides the raft we’ll be using; he has a quick smile and seems calmly confident. The rest of our raft is populated by an odd collection from England – a diminutive grandfather sporting an old hoodlum tattoo, his son and grand-daughter and another family associate. The son looks oddly familiar with close-cropped hair and sunglasses, but the day reveals the man has no reason to be familiar: he lacks any sense of competence. So with our merry troupe we head off down the Zambezi.

There are 17 sets of rapids that we traverse, many are Class IV, a few Class V. I’m excited to be here. The valley is very high above us, the water is low so we are privy to the rocky landscape of the river bed. In a few weeks the water will be at its lowest and we are told its most dangerous. But I’m sure everyone hears the same tale.

We start off down the river, the entire group makes about six rafts, with the additional 4 kayaks. These guys are well organized, the kayaks are for additional safety should someone end up in the water too far from a raft, and throughout the day, photographers are spaced along the river to capture the tourists. I try to get the people in my raft to stand for each photo op, but my admonishments are ignored.

Dan and Jack occupy the bow of our raft, except on the occasions when they weren’t able to stay in the boat. We are encouraged to purposely get out of the raft on several occasions, either for a quick swim, to do a little cliff diving, or to float some of the lighter class I, II rapids as a swimmer. That was actually very interesting, especially when we were caught in an eddy, spinning in circles while the rafts continued down the river. It was an odd sensation to be suddenly pulled upstream, and bang into another swimmer. At one point, all three of us were spinning in the same whirlpool, and laughing at it all – until Vector yelled at us to catch up.

The Class IV rapids were my most favorite. The Class V were usually just one large rock that should be avoided, but the “smaller” class IV’s seemed to be a longer run of white water, more time to get wet, fall in, and look stupid on film.

Our first waves

During our second set of rapids the boat lurched steeply to the right. Jack was almost catapulted out of the raft, but luckily Dan was there to catch him, and was consequently thrown from the raft himself. We also lost the rest of the starboard crew, but I wasn’t too concerned about that at the moment, I was too busy laughing.

This is a great shot of Father and Daughter, the camera doesn’t lie.

The front of the boat was the place to be, we had a fantastic time!

Some floaters seemed to think this was a scary ride, we loved every moment. A difficult skill for the novice rafters was keeping track of the cameramen on shore:

Vanity

Near the end of the day we came to a placid area of the river to take a less glamorous photo, but it captures the happiness of the group. By this time the young girl had redeemed herself quite well by attempting to swim one set of rapids with Jack and Dan. She also took an oar to the face in one of the more turbulent section (thanks Dad) where she cut her lip inside and out. She was a trooper about the whole thing, despite a wound that probably needs stitches and wouldn’t stop bleeding for quite a while.

One of Vector’s good friends was guiding a raft full of English school-boys, 14-18 years old. They were encouraged by their guide to splash our boat, while the guide took great pleasure in splashing me in particular; the “big man.” So as we were pulling near shore at the end of the trip, I made my best effort to board that vessel by leaping into it (and next to the guide) as it came near. I missed. Leaping from my raft I only opened the distance so I came down on the back of their raft and into the water. No worries, I pulled myself up, grabbed the offending guide and pulled him into the river with me. Vengeance is a small pleasure, but it was a memorable ending.

The most dangerous part of the trip came next. To get out of the canyon we stopped near a cable car. The car descends into the valley and stops high above the beach. Next the car unhinges at the carrier and drops vertically to the ground – about 30 feet. Jack and Dan look at me as if I know the answer. Why the hell not? We pile in and start counting how many will join us and hope the number is less than the rust spots and popped rivets on this contraption. We get to the top uneventfully; I am the last to sign the damage waiver, I get to it just before we dock. This is a good time to mention that on the opposite side of the river, porters are carrying rafts, kayaks and equipment by foot up the side of the valley. And they are not going slowly – it was very impressive.

We make our way back to the lodging area where we started, passing through the guides’ villages on the way. Lots of locals come out to say hello and every kid is waving. We notice that the locals whistle to communicate. I thought this was something peculiar on the river, but now it seems that many of these folks have whistles that work like names. So the ride becomes quite musical. This is only my observation; it may just be a silly notion.

It’s still early in the day, about 4PM, so we try to figure out what to do next. We head back to the falls and find our way to the bridge that crosses over to Zimbabwe. Halfway across there is a large pagoda and about 30 people milling about. As soon as we arrive, someone grabs Dan, checks his weight and puts him in a harness. Then Jack, and finally I get one of my own. We are 111 meters (365’) from the valley floor and we are going to jump off the bridge. Bungee baby!

Dan is a bit nervous. He’s already knocked back a couple beers and demands to go first so he won’t see us fall. But he goes through the whole process very well, its only when he looks down that anyone really notices the trepidation. He looks into the river below for only the briefest moment before snapping his eyes to the horizon. But he falls well, straight down with barely a scream. Jack is next and he is enthusiastic, even after I point out the frays in the rope. Jack’s war whoop is cut a bit short as he leaves the platform, but he gets off clean with only a slight twist. The twist turns into spins near the bottom, but Jack comes up happy.

Dan Titcomb

Jack Gray

I don’t see much of Jack’s return trip, cause I’m getting my feet wrapped in towels, two around each ankle, and then a strap with a D-ring goes around the towels and between my feet. The operator is blathering some nonsense about the jump, where to put my feet, the countdown, whatever. I’ve jumped from airplanes, flown helicopters – ground rush is my thing. Another guy with a camera is interviewing me, but I’m trying to monitor the dude with the towels and silly instructions. I ask blather boy if that’s as tight as the strap gets, he just smiles and pushes me towards the edge of the platform.

I want to get a good leap into the abyss, so I try to slide the balls of my feet over the edge. But when I get that far with one foot, I feel the weight of the rope tug on my leg. The rope is heavy and starts to pull me over. So I back up a little; only the toes I guess. I look at the horizon, smile to myself as I remember the first time I jumped for the parachute badge 24 years ago. Someone starts counting 5-4-3, but I’m not waiting. I bend my knees, lean forward and leap.

It’s beautiful. The river is coursing below, the air is clear. I can hear the wind start to pick up as I fall. Slowly my body rotates from prone to heads down and I can sense the speed. I’m looking forward to the next bit, the ground rush starts to come and then, right when its getting interesting - there’s a tug at my ankles and I slow much quicker than expected. The ride stops about 50 feet from the bottom. I thought it stopped, and actually felt a bit cheated as I watched the river pull away from me. Then I turn to see where I am going. Holyshittheresabridge! And I’m headed right for it. Obviously that was not an aspect of the ride I anticipated. For a few moments I bounce between the river and the bridge, trying to coax a little more into the ride by pulling with my legs and kipping at the bottom. But when the blood starts to settle in my head I decide enough’s enough.

During the last couple bounces I see someone descending from the bridge by rope. He lasso’s the bungee and pulls us together. I’m still bouncing around so to prevent any rope burn I grab his rope and stop all the movement. He’s not happy about that, but I’m pleased with my inverted dexterity. I crawl down the rope to his chair and we start the ride to the top. He gets to answer the same questions he’s probably answered a million times. He’s been working there for 4 years, jumps several times every day, and never wants to do anything else. I was number 90 for the day, second to last.

The sun is just reaching for the horizon as we collect back at the lodge. We settle onto the deck to watch the sun set over the high side of the Zambezi – and have a few drinks.