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Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia - 2005

Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia - 2005

Jacek Pałkiewicz
2006-06-25 14:23:32

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The sky in Africa is different: bigger than anywhere else on earth. At night, unpolluted by high rise buildings and electric lights, the moon is low and bright and the stars are very close. By day, the sun closes on the brim of the earth, as if the sky itself were trying to draw closer to this beautiful land.

Here they must always have known that the earth was round. Out in the bush you can see it: the curve of the land and the ark of the sky in the distance where the swaying grassland drops over the rim of the earth. And the sky descends not to meet with the horizon but to shield it, enclose it in this immense, blue dome.
In January, I made my first trip to Africa, to Zimbabwe, and under that huge sky I discovered three very different Africas.

Victoria Falls
Victoria Falls is one of the oldest towns in Zimbabwe. The first tourists came here in 1904 on the railway line which Cecil Rhodes dreamed would run from the Cape to Cairo, crossing the rainbow gorge close enough for the passengers to feel the spray as it fell on the carriages.I had hoped to recapture some of the pioneering spirit of a lost era, but Victoria Falls has moved on. The town is unashamedly geared towards the 1990's tourist: the coach stops outside a fast-food restaurant; the main street is filled with souvenir shops and currency exchanges.
We turned gratefully off the main street into an avenue of scented trees which led towards the elegant white columns of The Victoria Falls Hotel. A pillbox-hatted porter came running to take our luggage and we were transported out of the hot, hurried 1990's and into the cool, calm elegance of 1920's colonial Africa.
The Victoria Falls Hotel is an experience in itself. Tea is taken in the shade of the verandah, where the service is impeccable and the view breathtaking. Seated in chairs of rattan and polished wood and waited on by discreet staff in starched uniforms, you look out to the ...