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T
he plane banked its
wings to the left, and out the window the bush forests of Zambia appeared.
We peered out of the tiny round windows, anxious for our first glimpse
of the country. We'd been planning this trip for months, spending hours
on the phone, sending countless e-mails to arrange the details of our
eclipse coverage-- but now, for the first time, a real landscape appeared,
a landscape not of our imagining, a wide, flat expanse of dark green trees
and the deep red soil of eroded waterways and dirt roads. The silver curve
of an immense river slid in from the horizon down from west to east, which
we figured must be the Zambezi River.
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A
few seconds later, a
sight appeared that challenged anything we could have imagined: a deep
rocky gorge, like a rip in the flat stretched fabric of earth, into which
the river disappeared. Where the river had been, a huge plume of white
mist remained. In the total silence, we watched millions of gallons of
water slicing down and away-- Victoria Falls, one of the Seven Wonders
of the World.
Check in with us tomorrow as, with the cheerful
paranoia of customs and immigration past, we explore Zambia from ground
level.
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