written by Thom Hogan
We decided to break camp in Chobe early this morning, mostly to avoid potentially long lines at the border crossing into Zimbabwe, but also to give everyone more time at Victoria Falls. This turned out to be a good choice of timing, as there was no line when we arrived at the Zimbabwe Customs station, and we were able to process through quite quickly (for Africa).
We arrived at the historic Victoria Falls Hotel early, too, so rooms weren't quite ready. That gave us time for an early lunch and some story telling. I'm not going to tell the story yet, as that comes tomorrow for me (and a little later on this page), but I wanted everyone to know why this place was special to me, and to explain my mood.
Afternoon was dedicated to everyone enjoying the falls at their leisure. For dinner, we treated everyone to a full African buffet complete with native music and dancing. It was clear from the afternoon and the conversations that everyone was in "preparing for next travel" mode, so I didn't do any further instruction. I just showed them the video I had put together of our trip (see Bonus Video), and wished them a good night.
Day 11
I was up early this morning, taking a leisurely breakfast while listening to the background drone of the falls. All my students, though, are busy doing last minute packing and getting ready to leave the hotel this morning. Some are headed home, some are headed to another destination in Africa, and one is headed to a local project where they've volunteered for the next month.
After breakfast, I first made sure everyone got to their proper transport from the hotel, and then settled into what I told everyone I was going to do here at the falls: remember Galen Rowell.
I'm staying the extra day specifically for that purpose. I've never really taken a day to mourn the loss of one of the greatest adventure photographers, and I thought it appropriate to finally do so where we first met: Victoria Falls.
Even though that was now almost 30 years ago, being back here on the Zimbabwe side of the falls for the first time since that 1994 trip made it easy to remember my first encounter with the legend. What follows is the story I told the students yesterday...
Galen met us at the Victoria Falls Hotel for dinner, and then proceeded to give one of his inspiring photography lectures (complete with multiple slide projectors and a music sound track). Towards the end of the evening's instruction, he asked if anyone wanted to go photograph the sun coming up over the falls the following morning. Two of us said yes.
Oh, did I mention that Galen wanted to be in place by 5 am and that the park didn't open (then) until 7 am? By volunteering to photograph the sunrise we had also committed ourselves to climbing the park fence in the dark. All in order to get something like this:
The amusing bit was as I came out of the park through the regular gate at about 8am, I tried to pay my park entrance fee. "No, no, sir, you already paid when you went in." Hmm, how do I explain that I didn't do that? They were in complete denial that anyone might (or even could) jump the fence—it was a very tall fence, so I could see how they might think that—and wouldn't believe my story that I had snuck in. To this day I still owe Zimbabwe money. Amazingly, inflation would make that about US$30 today, despite all the issues that Zimbabwe has had with deflation.
After a late breakfast with Galen, we headed back out, this time paying for entering the park (so maybe I don't owe them anything after all ;~). We first headed to the Devil's Cataract, where we could easily see this rainbow (pardon the poor film scans in this section; I really need to redo them all now that I know what I'm doing):
Galen turned to me and asked: "So, do you know how to find rainbows?"
Uh, in front of me?
But it turned out he was serious and in full on teaching mode. The simplified version is this: look for the shadow of your head and go out about 45° (anyone can find 45°). There's the rainbow. In reality, the primary bow tends to be at 42°, and there's more to it than that, but in practice, if the conditions warrant a rainbow and the sun's angle is at the right angle to produce it, that's all you have to do: find the shadow of your head and go out ~45°.
If you know anything about the overlook at Devil's Cataract, you also know that you're on an outcropping, and the ground slopes off to the right to another gorge you walked around. I remember looking at Galen as he told me the rule and saying, "but if that's correct, then there would be a rainbow right over here to my..." and I turned to my right and saw something like this (not the exact image, but illustrates the point):
Doh.
With that little bit of instruction done, Galen took off at one of his usual gallups and started working his way up the Zimbabwe side of the falls. This consists of a series of outcroppings that each jut towards the Zambian side, with a trail that runs fairly straight along the base of each.
I had an idea: I needed to use what Galen just taught me to get a photograph of Galen photographing a rainbow! Sure, the idea was simple enough, but the practical side of that was terrible. Galen was a very fast runner with tons of endurance, and he didn't stay put very long, just enough to take a photo before jogging off to his next location. So as I used the rule I had just learned to try to line up an image of Galen with a rainbow in front of him on the first jutting section, I'd just about get my position and framing right and...poof...off ran Galen to the next section.
So of course I'd run off to the section that Galen had just abandoned and try again to line up a new image given where he ended up on the next section and...poof...Galen was off again.
This continued down the entire stretch of trail before Galen finally got to last outcrop at the Zambezi River outlet. Fortunately, I knew this was my last chance, so I was running full out. And here's what I ended up with:
Pay attention to that drop off. You might notice you can climb a bit down it. I used that later in the day to try to avoid the park rangers at closing time, because to them closing time was 6pm sharp, and the actual sunset was something like 6:15pm. Thus, I hid myself down in that outcropping so as to take this image looking back towards Devil's Cataract:
Unfortunately, my tactic didn't work. I soon found myself with a ranger with a gun standing over me telling me that the park was closed, and I needed to leave. (Apparently, the Zambian side had radioed over that there was somebody stuck on the side of the cliff.)
So on my extra day in Victoria Falls, these were the type of stories I was remembering. I'm pretty sure Galen would have been proud of my end-of-day strategy: get the image first and foremost (as long as you're doing no harm to anyone or anything).
All of us who knew Galen miss him. I missed him a little more today.
Bonus: Here's a side of Galen you probably never saw. The following photo was taken when Galen's wife threw him a surprise 60th birthday party in Huarez in the year 2000 on one of our trips together. Many of the cake and party decorations somehow got transferred by Barbara to Galen. To this day, I still find some of those little colored confetti dots in my gear. As you might surmise, there was never a dull moment on a trip with Galen.
