Victoria Falls, Zambia

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July 1 - 5, 2008

LIVINGSTONE, Zambia ( Victoria Falls )

The flight from Johannesburg is a fast 1.5 hours and we arrived in another country, Zambia, for the usual passport, visa hassles. ( should be getting used to that by now )

Our hotel is the very nice Royal Livingstone Hotel that sits right on the banks of the Zambezi River. ( with resident monkeys, Zebras, a Giraffe, and a lot of Elephants in the adjacent parks and a family of hippos in the river in front of the hotel ) It is a short ( 15 min. ) walk to the amazing Victoria Falls from the hotel. WOW ! What a beautiful place. This is probably the nicest place we have stayed at on our trip with five star accommodation, service and wonderful food. Anyone going to Livingstone should “buck up” and stay here for a couple of nights at least. ( a little pricey, but food and drinks were reasonable )

We enjoyed a very relaxing 5 days with one small excursion everyday and a lot of sitting at the pool and / or sitting at the riverside bar watching the spectacular sunsets and the activities of the hippos in the river with the clouds of spray from Victoria Falls in the background. L.G.

Victoria falls is spectacular to say the least and you can walk to the Zimbabwe border from the hotel for some spectacular face-on views of the gorge and falls. Most of the falls are on the Zambia side but the main river channel falls are on the Zimbabwe side but still visible from Zambia. The hotel provides the rain gear.

We took a visit to a local craft market to buy some more junk to drag around, a stop at a local crocodile farm, and a couple of walks to the falls. We also enjoyed High Tea on Livingstone Island, in the middle of the river at the top of the falls, with some photo ops of Alice and I sitting on the edge of the falls with the rainbows in the background and an unbelievable view of the falls from “ the other side “.

The highlight for me was a 30 minute flight on a Micro-Lite aircraft over the falls and over a game park next to the hotel. What a view. The falls, elephants, impalas, zebras, hippos in the river and crocodiles. AMAZING !! It would be hard to explain in words.

Anyone going to South Africa or Zambia must make this a part of your trip. It’s a beautiful place. There is all sorts of accommodation here from back packer facilities, hostels, B+B’s and 2, 3, 4, 5 star resorts and hotels.

Off tomorrow to Johannesburg for a one day stop and our connections to Morocco via Madrid.

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