Jun 5, 2014 | Cuisine, Family Friendly Activity, Home Hosted Meals, Wild Horizons Activites, Zimbabwean Culture
Last night – the 4th of June – I had the pleasure of experiencing the Home-Hosted Meals that are available in Victoria Falls for tourists and locals alike. There is a small handful of families and hosts/hostesses that open their homes up to visitors who are looking for an authentic and personal traditional dining experience in one of the two high-density suburbs in Victoria Falls – Chinotimba or Mkhosana.
These families then prepare a traditional spread and treat their visitors to a warm welcoming home cooked meal of sadza (a traditional maize meal similar to polenta), chicken or beef stew, kail (a variety of spinach), carrots, green beans, kapenta (whitebait fish), and last but not least, a traditional favourite dried Mopani worms – known as macimbi in the local Ndebele language.
There are a handful of these dinners that occur every Wednesday evening across the two townships, and what I found most interesting is the conversation that was shared between the visitors (who are just absolutely fascinated by the traditional cuisine) and the hosts/hostesses – who gladly share, teach and explain the traditional township customs to the visitors – who on this occasion all happened to be from the USA.
One of the comments which I could not help but giggle at was one that went along the lines of “Goodness! – I can’t believe how well behaved your kids are!”
Some of the families hosting the dinners have up to around 8 children and grandchildren living with them and indeed their behaviour was something to behold when compared to Western-world standards! It was an evening full of questions, answers, laughter and chit-chat, all of the guests seemed to thoroughly enjoy their traditional meals, and some of them were even brave enough to try out a dried Mopani worm or two!
Some may express concern about the safety aspect of having Westerners wonder through these parts of town – to them I simply say “try it and see!”. All of the visitors who I spoke to were taken hugely by surprise at how relaxed, welcoming and happy the vibe is, unlike other parts of the world. Crime is very minimal in Victoria Falls, probably because of the nature of the people, who seem to have a really laid-back, loving, humorous and friendly approach to life.
A Home-Hosted Dinner (or lunch, they also do lunches) is truly a must-do activity if you are keen to really immerse yourself into local customs, cuisine and culture. The vibe of these suburbs in the early evening really is a unique experience – the sights, sounds and smells of fires, evening church bands, urban chatter and of course the beautiful night-views over Livingstone which can be glimpsed at certain high points in the townships really do make for a fulfilling cultural experience. A huge thanks go out to the welcoming host families for opening up their homes in the name of cross-cultural education, experience, fun and food!
Apr 17, 2014 | The Flying Fox, The Gorge Swing, The Zip Line, Wild Horizons Activites, Wild Horizons Lookout, Wild Horizons Staff, wildhorizons, Zambezi river
Wild Horizons is a multi-faceted tour company that provides a large array of activities, operates out of multiple locations, has a huge fleet of vehicles, 2 luxury bush camps, employs over 400 people and operates at full tilt, 24/7. So you can imagine, that as a new employee arriving on day one of the job, the introduction is both hugely exciting and somewhat overwhelming. For my first blog post, I thought I would recount what my first couple of weeks in the Wild Horizons marketing department has been like!
One of the things that struck me first and foremost was the friendliness of absolutely everyone. From the gate-guards to the mechanics, to the camp managers and the directors – I was instantly made to feel welcome. I started off with a tour of the main HQ in the industrial sites of Victoria Falls, the size of which blew me away. Four large wings of offices surrounding a big courtyard with lush green buffalo lawn and teeming flower beds around the sides. A large workshop at the back and ample room to park the large fleet of vehicles and luxury transfer busses. My tour of the HQ was accompanied by mass introductions to all the staff in every department – around 100 people in total would be my guess. I admitted to myself that it would be pointless to stress too much about everyone’s names as I would never remember them first time round. No doubt I would pick them up one by one as I deal with each department in due course.
One of my first tasks is to join the marketing team in coming up with a marketing campaign for one of Wild Horizons’ many products – the Vic Falls CanopyTour – the newest of 4 products which Wild Horizons offers from its jump site – “The Lookout”.
The Lookout (#wildhorizonslookout) is a thatched deck structure, which is perched right on the lip of the Batoka Gorge, just downstream of the Vic Falls Bridge on the Zimbabwean side. It has a spectacular view of the bridge and sits overlooking the first ‘bend’ in the zig-zagging gorge which occurs below the Victoria Falls. There is even a tame wild goat called Dixon who hangs out there like all the time!
The other 3 products which operate from The Lookout are the ‘Flying Fox’ – a foofie slide which extends across the width of the entire gorge; the ‘Gorge Swing’, which is a death-defying free-fall off a platform into the gorge attached to a rope, which then ‘swings’ you as you reach the bottom; and the ‘zip-line’ – which is a dual-cabled foofie slide that makes a rather steep downward parabola, but without quite putting you into freefall. Finally, the Vic Falls Canopy Tour is a series of 9 shorter, low-speed cable-slides that crisscross the inside of the first bend of the gorge (below the Victoria Falls Hotel) where the vegetation is thick and very jungle like – with vines and steep drops galore. It offers a very mild adrenaline rush and is the perfect ‘in-between’ activity for those who can’t quite bring themselves to do the more intense adrenalin activities such as the gorge swing, whitewater rafting or the bungee jump.
So off I go with a group of paying clients on the Vic Falls Canopy Tour. We harness up and set off on a path down the side of the gorge, and it’s not far before we get to slide no.1. The guide hooks our safety lines up to a safety rope that runs along the entirety of the course – all the walkways, bridges and even on the actual foofie slides where is a second steel safety cable which we are attached to whilst sliding. My first impression is that the safety is being taken very seriously.
We step up onto a box/platform that overlooks a cliff and the guide hooks our main & safety lines to the respective cables, and upon hearing a whistle through the trees from another guide indicating that he is ready to receive us – we step off the platform and start whizzing down the slide. Now we have been given thick leather gloves for our hands, and we have been instructed to hold our harness line which connects us to the cable with our left hand, and then loosely hold the cable with our other hand, BEHIND the pulley. This allows for us to squeeze the cable with our hand to slow ourselves down when we start reaching the end of the slide. It took a few go’s to get the timing right, but before long I was timing my hand-braking perfectly and was landing gracefully on the box as is required for the guide to dismount you from the pulley and hook you back up to the ground safety line.
This carried on for 8 more slides of varying lengths and speeds, and I looked forward to each slide more than the last – the views were just spectacular and the ambience of being in the Batoka Gorge canopy, with the view of the bridge right in front of you, and the Zambezi roaring beneath you – was just incredible. A really great product indeed, and it even had really nice boarded walkways and rope bridges for the more difficult parts. So far, I’m thinking I love my job!
