Day 19- Victoria Falls
Well it definitely pays to have an excellent, local travel
agent when things go wrong. We got hold
of Sandi this morning and by the afternoon, she had 2 options for us. We elected to change our flight and go to
Windhoek a day early and spend the day there rather than an extra day in Johannesburg. The only problem was our hotel in Windhoek
had no room for the extra night, so she booked us in another and we would
transfer in the morning. A disaster averted.
After breakfast, a bunch of us
sauntered into town, taking great pains (to avoid greater pains) to look left,
before street crossing streets. The town
was full of shops including one with my name on it!
Jeri and I broke from the group to walk to
the bridge to bungee jump (just checking to see if you are really reading this
or just looking at the pictures). I
briefly considered it until we both got nauseous watching some girl swing
upside down from the end of a 200 foots line for about 5 minutes after
jumping. I think my surf lesson in
Hawaii taught me there are some things I should avoid at 63.
We
all met back at the hotel to get picked up for a helicopter ride over the
falls. We weren’t going to do it, but
several people told us it was a must. We
only spent about 15 minutes flying over the falls, but it was amazing. Ken and I used scissor, paper, stone to
determine who got to ride in the co-pilot seat, and I lost, so the pressure was
on Ken for some great pix. I’m looking
forward to seeing them.
Tonight we had our farewell dinner aboard a dinner boat on the Zambezi River, just upstream from Vic Falls. The food was fair, but the ambiance, spectacular. We saw some hippos along the banks, and watched another killer sunset. Ent4rtainment on board was an African acapella group that sang both African songs and doo-wop. They also sang the original African version of “the Lion Sleeps Tonight”. The original title was "Mbube," which means "lion." It was a hunting song originally sung in Zulu in what is now Swaziland. In the 1950s, Miriam Makeba recorded this with the Zulu lyrics, and then Pete Seeger recorded it with his band, The Weavers. Seeger thought they were saying "Wimoweh" on the original, and that's what he wrote down and how it was recorded in English. They were actually saying "Uyimbube," which means "You're a Lion." It was misheard for "Wimeoweh" because when pronounced, Uyimbube sounds like: oo-yim-bweh-beh. That’s how we got the lyrics we all know (and love?).
When we returned to the hotel from dinner, we had the opportunity to meet Mandela’s fiancée, Lorraine. Over the past two weeks, we heard a lot about her and we were pleased to have Mandela introduce us, and let his new “aunties” give her the once over. She passed with flying colors. In Africa, marriage involves a ritual called Lobola or bride price. The potential groom’s uncle goes to the bride’s father to negotiate a fair price to pay for her. This is determined by her physical beauty, age, education and is paid in COWS. Sometimes it involves cash and cows, for city dwellers, the cow tends to be metaphoric only. Based on what we saw of Lorraine, Mandela is going to have to give her parents an entire herd! Although in the villages, invitations are not given to a wedding, all are welcome, we were all invited to Mandela and Lorraine’s.
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