Victoria Falls

Everyone was a bit sad to leave 'Wildlife Park' but it was time to move on. The next two days were spent on the road with more early mornings. Our route took us through the capital of Zambia, Lusaka. We stopped at a large shopping centre and it showed how 'modern' parts of Zambia are. Apparently Zambia was opened up to foreign investment about 2008 and it really showed here. The shopping centre was reasonably large, probably a little smaller than Eastland was before the recent expansion. The customers though seemed quite diverse and were certainly not all African. Our camp for the night was less than half an hour away from here yet there was a giraffe near the entrance and zebras walking in the campsite. Strange.

Next day we arrived at the Zimbabwe border, and what a drag that was. There were four people in the queue waiting to buy visas and the dude behind the counter spent at least 10 minutes doing a stocktake of his receipt book!  We had been warned that Zimbabwe still hand wrote all the various entries and could be slow but this was ridiculous.  Our chef - a Zimbabwean - eventually came up to us (still waiting) took our passports and money and tried to hurry up the process. Not sure if it worked or not but he was at least another 30 minutes. All up we spent around 2 hours at the border.

We eventually got to our hotel (no camping at Victoria Falls, for which we are all very grateful) where we were given a suite, with Lauren in her own room. We booked a couple of activities for the next day and walked into town. We were all very keen to swim in the 'Devils Pool' but they were booked out. The pool is at the very top of the falls and you can look over the edge and down. Would have been awesome :(

Our tour officially ended when we arrived in Zimbabwe and a 'new' tour starts the next day. We have met our new driver and the truck will now be 'Cash'. There are 14 on this tour, us (obviously), one other Australian (who was on our other tour) plus a mix of Swiss, German and British.  Here are a few parting photos of Ella.
Lockers at the back of the truck

Freezer at the front that doubles as a card table

Lunch on the road

We had a free day in Victoria Falls and started with a zipline across the gorge.

 It was a little tame and I would have liked to do bungee, but we have booked a helicopter flight for later today and things were getting expensive. Next we went into the Victoria Falls park and were all pretty blown away by the size of the falls. They are 1700 metres wide - 1.7km and even though it is dry season there is still a lot of water coming over.




Last activity for the day was a helicopter flight over the falls. It only lasted 12 minutes but was pretty spectacular

Off to Botswana tomorrow and Chobe National Park. 5 countries down, 3 to go.

Comments

  1. Moshe5 September 2018 at 21:28

    Nice photos from the falls! Keep enjoying and stay safe.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ellen22 November 2018 at 13:58

    Zip line would have been fun, even if you did think it was tame.

    ReplyDelete

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