A honeymoon in thrall of the Smoke that Thunders

Lunch of seswaa, morogo and lephutsi. (Photo: Marita van der Vyver)

By Marita Van der Vyver

14 Jun 2024

The honeymoon we’d waited for for so long finally materialised. He says Lune de miel, I say wittebrood – but let’s not call the whole thing off.

They say good things come to those who wait. I used to think this was just another excuse for procrastination, but after a belated honeymoon at a famous waterfall, I finally understand what they mean.

If we had our honeymoon right after our wedding, we would probably have been more, well, physically active, not to put too fine a point on it. But that was not to be. When I married my Frenchman 23 years ago we already had four children between the two of us, and far too little time or money for any kind of honeymoon. So we got on with raising the children and postponed the dream of a honeymoon to one day in the distant future.

Now all our children are grown up, and one of us is retired, and we could finally plan our long-awaited honeymoon at the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. And what a good thing that turned out to be. Never mind the physical activity, as you grow older you realise, thank heavens, that sensual pleasure is a much broader concept than you would have believed in your youth — and good food becomes an unmissable part of a belated honeymoon.

After all, the word honeymoon and its French translation, lune de miel, both contain something edible, while the Afrikaans wittebrood (white bread) is derived from what used to be a luxury food only enjoyed on special occasions.

I can’t remember when the idea of a waterfall honeymoon took hold of me, but it probably has something to do with visiting the Canadian town of Niagara Falls, on my own, long before I got married. This town has been promoted as the perfect honeymoon destination since the early 19th century. Of course, North Americans can put a positive marketing spin on just about anything, but in this case, the myth apparently started with the French, after Napoleon’s brother, Jerome Bonaparte, spent his honeymoon there. Since people have always loved following royal trendsetters, as can still be seen today, Niagara Falls soon became known as The Honeymoon Capital of the World.

When I first saw the thundering mass of water, I couldn’t help thinking of the 50s film in which a young Marilyn Monroe proves that she is a phenomenon as spectacular as anything found in nature. One of the two couples in the movie Niagara (not the combustible pair formed by Monroe and the older Joseph Cotton) was having a belated honeymoon, so perhaps the first seeds of my own postponed honeymoon sprung from a Hollywood blockbuster.

But I also couldn’t help comparing the overcrowded Niagara site to the splendour of the much higher, broader and still less-visited Victoria Falls. Even though I’d never seen the African waterfall in real life, the rave reviews of numerous friends were enough to convince me that this was indeed a bucket-list destination. And somewhere along the line, through many years of marriage, it became the honeymoon destination of my dreams.

In search of the Smoke that Thunders

Victoria Falls seen from the rainforest on the Zimbabwe side. (Photo: Marita van der Vyver)

When at long last we could fly to Victoria Falls, I was old enough to know that reality rarely measures up to our dreams, so I wasn’t too distressed when we got off to a bumpy start, quite literally.

The ridiculously small plane in which we were supposed to fly from Johannesburg developed a technical problem, which they tried to fix while we were waiting in a bus, and when they couldn’t fix it, we were transferred to an even smaller plane with a co-pilot looking as if he should still be in school. There was something else wrong with this toy plane, and as I was sitting in the front seat, almost on the pilot’s lap, I could see the sweat breaking out on his neck as he tried to fix it before we could take off. I tried to convince myself that he was sweating from the heat (no aircon in the toy plane) rather than from sheer terror.

But all’s well that ends well, and after that bumpy flight we had our adrenalin fix for the rest of our stay.

During the next few days at a hotel on the bank of the Zambezi River, looking out on Zambia across the water, we weren’t interested in bungee jumping or whitewater rafting or any of the other scary activities on offer. We limited our adventures to sunset cruises and game drives and dips in the hotel pool rather than in the crocodile-infested river. And to eating and drinking within sight of dangerous animals.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Falls in love – finding lesser-known treasures on the banks of the mighty Zambezi

The very first evening, we enjoyed sundowners on the patio of the bar, a couple of metres from a sign with the ominous words Beware of crocodiles. But a little later, in the open-air restaurant, we could turn the tables and have a bite of crocodile. I’m no vegetarian, but I’ve always followed an unwritten rule when it comes to meat: I prefer to eat animals that can’t eat me. This evening, though, I was feeling adventurous — or as sedately adventurous as you can get when you refuse to go whitewater rafting — and decided to make an exception. I didn’t order the crocodile dish, but my husband was too curious to resist it. (He’s French, remember, and his people eat frogs and snails and very small birds.) And watching him so obviously enjoying the grilled strips of firm white meat resembling chicken made me curious enough to steal a few bites from his plate.

It did indeed taste like rather good chicken. As we nibbled on the crocodile, we wondered if eating carnivorous animals could perhaps be defended as a way of levelling the playing ground. It seems slightly less unfair to the animals we eat, doesn’t it?

I ordered the grilled warthog, without too much moral agony. A year earlier when I’d tasted warthog for the first time — in a delicious warthog pie in the Kruger National Park — I couldn’t stop seeing Pumba in The Lion King. But when a family of warthogs jogged through the garden just as we were walking back to our room, I did have second thoughts. Maybe I should eat more crocodile in future.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Really, you need to eat more bloody wild meat

Sunset cruise on the Zambezi. (Photo: Marita van der Vyver)

The next day we spent walking in the rainforest bordering the smoking waters, so thrilled by all the different falls (Rainbow Falls, Horseshoe Falls, Main Falls, Boiling Pot, Devil’s Cataract) that we didn’t even think of lunch. Besides, we’d had a huge breakfast, including a variety of tropical fruits and juices, so we couldn’t possibly be hungry. But then we passed a group of French tourists and heard a woman exclaim in a panic-stricken tone: “It’s almost midday and we have no idea what we’re going to eat!” Ah, French tourists, we said to each other. Even this breathtaking natural wonder can’t make them forget their stomachs.

Snacking while watching hippos in the water. (Photo: Marita van der Vyver)

That evening we went on a sunset cruise around one of the islands on the Zambian side of the river, gliding past hordes of hippos in and out of the water, a few lazy crocodiles on the banks, elephant, buffalo, warthogs and antelope. All the while sipping cool white wine and snacking on samoosas, meatballs, spicy chicken wings, fried rolls stuffed with fish or vegetables, and sweet potato crisps, with the setting sun splashing the sky above the water in soft hues of gold and pink.

After such a sensory overload we were content to enjoy a simple supper of fresh white bread on our bedroom balcony, listening to the beating drums of a group of traditional musicians performing at the restaurant and watching a hippopotamus stealthily grazing in a shadowy spot of the garden. Ah, what an adventurous day that was, we agreed.

The following morning we were up before dawn to drive to Botswana for more game viewing; a leisurely boat cruise on the Chobe River until lunch and an afternoon safari in an open vehicle in the Chobe National Park. We saw almost every animal on our wish list, including a solitary lion and hundreds of elephant of all sizes and ages. Some frighteningly big old bulls, some adorable floppy-eared babies with their mothers, some far in the distance and others so close we could hear them breathe. And more hippos than we could count, once again.

Elephants seen from the Chobe River. (Photo: Marita van der Vyver)

And once again the food was one of the highlights of the whole adventure. During a buffet lunch on the river bank in the shade of an enormous baobab tree, I ate what was described as the national dish of Botswana: seswaa, a slow-cooked stew made of beef or goat meat. Fortunately, the one offered here was the goat-meat stew. I can eat beef stew whenever I want in France, but for a good goat stew, I’ll have to find a good African restaurant, which is in short supply in the French countryside. The seswaa was mouthwateringly good, served with shiny green morogo or African spinach and a chunk of bright orange lephutsi or pumpkin.

Lunch of seswaa, morogo and lephutsi. (Photo: Marita van der Vyver)

Our Chobe River cruise also took us into the Namibian part of the river, so I suppose you could say that in four days we were actually in four different countries. I don’t know where else on earth you can have such a unique experience, with so many lovely local dishes to taste, even if you’re not on honeymoon. But I do know it won’t be in the North American Honeymoon Capital of the World. DM

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