Ken went off to play golf at Elephant Hills (a course attached to the next hotel down the road) this morning, Helen and Naomi went to said hotel's casino, and the rest of us went riding elephants. After a drive of about a half hour mostly over dirt roads, we arrived at a small clearing furnished with a set of metal steps. In a few minutes, a string of four elephants and their guides strolled into view and we mounted up. The guide explained to us that these elephants had been acquired as babies by some people living elsewhere and kept as pets. As they got older, however, they became too big to keep. Since they had been raised by people, they had little chance of surviving in the wild, so they were trained as part of a project to establish that, contrary to popular belief, African elephants can be trained as well as Indian elephants.
Matt on an elephant. I'm the pale one.
As we set off into the bush, it was surprising how little noise the elephants made. Apparently, elephants have thick, fleshy pads on the bottoms of their feet, which spread to cushion the impact as they walk. Incidentally, this allows them to move remarkably stealthily. I doubt they made more noise than I would have; it certainly allowed us to get quite close to the giraffes. We didn't see a lot in the way of game (late morning isn't a great time to go looking for animals), but the point of the exercise for me was simply to ride the elephants. My guide, Sipho, was a treasury of information on plants and insects as well as larger animals. For example, the African star chestnut tree has a bark that peels off in thin layers periodically. The "live" bark is fairly pale, but as it peels, it darkens and turns a deep crimson, giving the tree a dark reddish appearance. The chestnuts themselves are toxic to humans, but elephants munch on them. The ride concluded with a nice outdoor lunch with a few of the guides, which developed into a discussion of American society and politics.
Rejoining everybody else, we went to the open-air marketplace in "downtown" Victoria Falls to buy trinkets and curios. It was a profoundly unpleasant experience that I'm not eager to repeat. The feeling of being a potential target was compounded by a predatory edge to the bargaining. The people selling stuff were out to extract as much money as possible from the tourists, while the tourists were primed to get as much stuff out of the craftsmen as they could for as little money as possible.
After shopping, we headed across the street to the Victoria Falls Hotel for high tea. The Victoria Falls Hotel was established in the previous century by British colonialists and, in a way, it's still the late nineteenth century there: manicured grass lawns, whitewashed Georgian architecture, and, of course, high tea. The scones were wonderful, the tea hit the spot, and the petit-fours were the first chocolate I had had in weeks. Tea was also enhanced by the view from the terrace. We were around a bend from the falls themselves, but the slope down to the Zambezi perfectly framed the river bridge.