Today we finally saw Victoria Falls, close up & personal. This is the “dry” season, so instead of being this bigger-than-you-can-handle mile-wide maelstrom of water, you get a much more manageable waterfall broken up into several different pieces, each in its own right pretty darned impressive.

While the waterfall was impressive, the heat was oppressive; today it was 102 degrees which isn’t so bad for me (no hotter than Kevin and I dealt with in France) but Karen (my wife) kinda melts. She was struggling toward the end of the rather longish hike; I should have put it on Strava to find out just how long. Maybe a bit over a mile? But worth it. Is it worth traveling 20,000 miles (round trip) to see? No. Nothing that isn’t bike-related could possibly be worth that! But it’s just one piece of a 12 day cruise through southern Africa. So far, that’s included a morning game drive (no lions, but several rare black rhinos), an amazing village tour (described yesterday), a dinner cruise with all-you-can-drink alcoholic beverages (I doubled my years’ intake by having a tiny amount of white wine along with a vodka & orange juice which I thought was called a screwdriver but the guy mixing the drinks didn’t know it by that name), this morning’s trip to the Falls, and an afternoon trip into the town itself.

Tomorrow’s our last full day in Victoria Falls, which will start out with a trip to the Devil’s Pool. This is one of the crazier things I’ve done; it involves a trip out to one of the islands in the middle of the falls, where you jump into this small pool that is literally right against the edge of the waterfall. As in, you can look over the edge straight down to the bottom. What keeps you in place is a natural rock wall that has been resisting the current for thousands of years, and hopefully will continue to do so tomorrow. Hadn’t thought about it that way until just now. Kinda wish I hadn’t! You can click on the photo to the right and see people doing this. I’m thinking the main thing that will convince me to jump into the water will be the fact that it will again be 102 tomorrow.

After that little stunt we’ll be re-gathering what’s left of our wits and start looking over a ton of photos before our final outing in this part of Africa in the evening, a “BOMA” dinner, which is tourist-authentic (meaning nothing you bite bites back at you?) food & African cultural event. I may even get to eat some sort of worm. Hey, at least if I get sick after this trip, I’ll know what might have caused it!