Friday night
Mercedes Sayagues
Zimbabwe has a Lost City, in the Great Zimbabwe ruins, and a Fun City, in Vic Falls. More than half a million tourists flock every year to Vic Falls to have fun, since that is what tourists are supposed to do. The town has caught the disease. Every day is a holiday. Bars are full on Mondays, even before payday. So take your pick, from bungee jumping to bar hopping, you can do lots of things in Vic Falls. Guess what I did.
The six blocks that make up the tourist core of Vic Falls offer varied options for fun at night.
One is company. For many tourists, finding a local companion is part of the African experience. If you don’t want to be alone, you don’t have to. Company is offered, in all colours, ages and sexual preferences. For free and for pay. After Falls-gazing, wildlife-watching, whitewater rafting and canoeing, sexual tourism seems to be a popular activity.
Where to go:
Turn left after entering the town campsite into a basic watering hole, in deep- Zimbabwe style: chipped blue wallpaint, soft drink posters, benches along the wall, an old video game, outside toilets, highly danceable African music, the cheapest beer in town -straight from the bottle – and a collection of drunks and sultry girls. Everybody is out to have a good time. Frequented mostly by locals and overlanders camping at the site. Tourists from the posh hotels would rather be caught dead than here. It is fun if you can handle drunks.
When the smoke-cum-alcohol content in the air becomes too much, move on to The Explorer, past the railway, at the Soper centre. No foreign whitewater rafter would be caught anywhere else than here. Loud music, pub grub, wild atmosphere, mostly expats wearing shorts and tank tops, lots of tanned skin and muscle exposed. No over 25 allowed – just kidding. But that is the feel.
A cross between the two is Crock Rock. New, still a bit of construction going on, it snakes outdoors and indoors through the Zambezi centre across from The Explorer. Two bars, 22 TVs showing sports, one dance floor, one pool table, Zimbabwean food like sadza and mahondo, with an upmarket township feel. Clients are a mixture of locals and tourists. Entrance is Z$100, ladies free on Thursday nights. Full opening on June 25.
People in a quiet mood can try the small, clean bar next to Frontiers, attached to a restaurant, in the alley to Phumula centre. You can talk and hear each other in a subdued far West decor.
At the Great Enclosure of The Kingdom hotel, South Africans with an attack of acute nostalgia can drink it down at its ovepriced franchises, just like in Pretoria, and feel they never left home.
If there is a full moon, forget the bars and head for the Falls. Nothing beats that. Beware of elephants along the path outside the rain forest, towards the Vic Falls and Kingdom hotels. One chased me and, boy, did I run.
Mercedes Sayagues is a freelance writer based in Harare