Vic Falls - goodbye, Ella

This is a weird place. Well, Savanna itself isn't, but Vic Falls as a town. We were up bright and early this morning. 'Cape to Vic' is a trip in itself (although I'm going on to Kruger), so that was techincally the last camping night of the trip. We reached the border around 8:00am and got through within about forty-five minutes (Bjorn promised the guys some beers from the coolers if they had us processed by 8:30.

Last night, a guy called Tyrone appeared. He was of mixed race (some Indian in there, I think), and Bjorn knew him well. He was a little plastered, but he sat and chatted. He's 'responsible' for a village near Vic Falls, and was telling us about the place. It sounds very depressing. A beer costs two month's wages in Zim. People work in restaurants for free so they get the food. On a lighter note, though, he told us that rafting opened for the season on Friday. This brought a cheer from everyone, since we'd been told at the beginning that heavy rains meant it was going to open later. A result.

Approaching Vic Falls, we paused for photos at the entrance sign. There were a couple of guys along there with elephants. Bjorn said they were from the 'Elephant Walk' tour, and were just on their way to or from somewhere. Such is the nature of money here, though, that they let us feed and pet the elephants, and pose for photographs – all on the implicit understanding that we'd tip them a little. So, everyone wins. I also managed to set my new camera on timer and maded it on to the roof of the truck with everyone else within ten seconds. I haven't quite got the hang of this camera

Savanna, then, is where Lee used to work, and where Bjorn and her met. I'm not sure how much detail I've gone into, but she's a trainee guide, and they're in a relationship. She's great, laughes a lot, gets on with everyone. I don't know if it's because she's travelling with boyfriend, though, but she's 'rubbish'. She's always cold, frightened of just about everything, hates getting up early. I'm not sure how she'll make a guide, unless she steps up to the plate when he's not there. Anyway...

So, we had a bit of an argument at reception. They have rooms of four, and they're not mixed. Since Silv and I are the only single blokes on the trip, that would have meant that we may be with random strangers. Christine and Heather felt the same, so we agreed to share a room. This proved to be impossible, since 'Nomad had specified no mixed dorms'. This was, of course, ridiculous, since we'd been in mixed rooms in Windhoek and Swakopmund. Bjorn pointed out that the policy was that people wouldn't be forced to share a mixed dorm, but they wouldn't have it. I don't know what's happened to me, but I'm getting the hang of beligerence. They said they couldn't do it becaue we might complain. I said, 'Look, if we're forced to share a dorm with random strangers on an organised Nomad trip – particularly as we have four people – then I'm DEFINITELY going to complain very loudly'. At this, they gave up protesting and let us have our way.

Karma got me back, though. The guy arrived to show us a DVD of all the activities (including rafting!). Now, I know Abbie's going to give me a hard time about this, since she specifically said, 'Make sure you take enough USD to Vic Falls, since it's impossible to get hold of.' Guess what? After working out what I wanted to do, I realised I only had around sixty dollars. I'm sure I drew out eight hundred at Heathrow, so I'm not sure what happened. I was nearly gutted. Luckily, Christine – the most organised person I've ever met – was able to lend me a few hundred dollars (she brought fifteen hundred!), so I feel very stupid, quite humble, and very thankful. I've promised to take a lot of photos of them over the next few days as a thank you (and I'll pay them back, of course). I have no idea where I went wrong with the figures.

We had lunch, and it's interesting to note that I'm not the only person 'WEM' is annoying. I was sitting next to her, with Artto and Magda opposite. We were talking about how pleased we were that rafting was open. She said, 'Well, I've done it before, you know, so I can't see the point. It's all the same wherever you go...'. Artto pointedly dropped his fork and looked away, but she didn't notice. It's not the fact that that's what she thinks, it's the fact that she says it in such a way that suggests that the rest of us are wasting our time. She seems to have this thing about experiencing 'real Africa', so you wonder why she came on this trip. For me, Heather - very quietly - is much more about that - engaging the polers in conversation long into the night, and talking to Tyrone last night. She's bought twenty-five kilograms or so of maize and oil to donate here. Wow.

So, our last drive in Ella took us down to the Falls. It's wet down there. The locals call it 'The Smoke That Thunders', and you can see why. The whole places is covered in a fine mist, that gets heavier and lighter at intervals. I took lots of 'Mackins' here, so I'm going to have to do a bit of editing, as card three is nearly full. Now I'm just killing time until dinner, after walking back. There are a lot of people trying to talk to you. They all have various crafts, and they want to trade for anything - your t-shirt, shoes... Quite scary what's happened here. We changed a US dollar into Zim, and I now have a few billion Zimbabwean dollars. Amazing. Now I have to go sort out the stuff I'm doing, since I think I may have screwed up the days...