To the Okavango and Beyond
Prelude: Victoria Falls
The Best of Botswana tour starts from Victoria Falls. I arrive a day early, to give myself time to enjoy what I'm convinced is the most beautiful place on earth. I walk from my lodgings through the town. It has an atmosphere all its own, with quaint, old-world shops, ugly-but-cute warthog grazing on the grass verges, and always the distant accompanying sound of Mosi-oa-Tunya - The Smoke that Thunders
A pleasant stroll along the highway and through the bush brings me to the entrance to the Falls, where I am mobbed by vendors selling carvings, curios, bottles of water and raincoats. Yes, the Rain Forest is definitely wet enough to need a raincoat!
​
The first view of the Falls is the Devil's Cataract, a seventy metre colum of foaming, churning, thundering water, mesmerising and incredibly beautiful, set against the stark black basalt rock, the green vegetation and the blue of the sky and river beyond. I stand for a long time, drinking in the sensations. The rising and falling rhythm of crashing water in my ears. Drifts of cooling spray in my face. The fresh smell of wet air, damp vegetation and riverweed. A rainbow dancing over the silver water and dark cliffs.
I walk on to Main Falls down a cobbled path between the tangled growth of the rain forest. Here the bulk of the Zambezi River descends with a pounding roar, boiling surf and vapour clouds. At this season, when the river is high, the Falls are often obscured by the spray until it drifts on the wind like a bride's veil, revealing the loveliness beneath. I'm now soaking wet, and I take my shoes off to enjoy a foot massage on the wet cobbles as I walk.
On and on, past Rainbow Falls, amongst the luxuriant growth of the Rain Forest. A Bambi-like bushbuck appears among the trees. Banded mongooses play in the undergrowth, and monkeys appear from time to time, swinging from the branches. Rainbows shimmer across the grass as I approach Horseshoe Falls. And finally, I reach the gorge, marked by a perfect rainbow arched above a rocky outcrop. The 1.7 km-wide fall of water is compressed into a narrow channel, unimaginably deep, where it leaps and boils to fight its way through on its long journey to the sea.
I make my way back slowly, stopping often to enjoy nature's magnificence, wishing I could stay here forever. I'll be back!
