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Published: March 19th 2007
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Ahhhh Zimbabwe! Crossing the border into Zim was relatively smooth, no matter how angry-seeming the passport control guy was.... seriously he stamped our passports so hard, bits of the rubber flew off! ;-) and then after stamping all our passports and given us our visas asking us to write all our names on a scrap bit of paper.... riiiiiiiight.........
We are staying 4 nights in Zimbabwe - all at the relatively safer area of Vic Falls, 2 nights with old tour and 2 nights with start of new tour.
We arrived fairly early at our campsite, the infamous Shoestrings campsite. Has a really fun bar area with heaps of fun guys behind the bar - cheers Sidney, Tony, Chris and others! - and a well looked-forward-to swimming pool. Was a great place for 50c beers during the evenings, great pizzas and a great place to hang some days. However the camp itself is quite small and it wasn't a great place to stay unless you're combered out everynight (i guess most of their guests are...) as the bar music goes til about 3am and keeps you awake til then in your room (yes, upgraded from the tent again -
albeit to an incredibly basic room which only had hot water occassionally and a squealing ceiling fan which threatened to come off the ceiling at any time and rattled the front door!) ;-) We spent the first day in Zim confirming our tour t-shirt designs, picking optional activities for our time here, trying a local cafe and lounging by the pool. We also gave out the disgusting costumes we'd picked up for each other in Namibia to be worn that night on the Booze Cruise. A few shocked faces and Martin had picked my name out of the hat! He'd bought the most disgusting striped dress and he himself ended up in a pastel yellow frock with embroidery that earned him his nick name Jesus for the night. ;-) The Booze Cruise (the company that operates the boat hedges their bets by marketing to young tour companies as a booze cruise and to the older clientele as a sunset cruise which makes for some nasty glares from the elderly once you get on board) started about 4pm and was a fun trip down the zambezi river with unlimited alcohol (and these guys love to dish up a "vodka and sprite"
with only a dash of sprite...). Saw limited wildlife on the swollen river, but some hippos and birds. Luckily, since we were all dressed like maniacs, the company found us a smaller boat and put us on that with only one other couple, saving the rest of their clientele from glaring at us all night in our funny outfits on their big boat! That night we all ended up being thrown into the pool in our outfits and was quite a late night for most of our group!
The next day we slept in a bit then walked down to Vic Falls with Val. About 1.8km from Shoestrings, and even saw an elephant on the way. The falls are wicked, there is so much water at the moment it truely is impressive and the current above the falls is quite incredible. The spray from the falls feels literally like torrential rain, honestly! and you are soaked within seconds! I had a complete stream of water pouring off my cap, it was heavier than any rain storm I'd ever been in and so hard to believe it was just SPRAY! We went back to the cafe we'd been to yesterday
and got great cappuchino shakes and lunch for about $2.50 each yeehaa! Then we hung for the day just cruising about, playing 500 and logging back onto the internet for a first time in a wee while. We went out to dinner with our guide and driver from last truck for last time at In-da-belly which served ok, rather small quantities of food. That day was St Patrick's Day, and our token Irish girl Val made sure everyone was wearing green and drinking up that night. Martin and Val stayed up til about 2.30am, after leaving Shoestrings, they went down to the bar at the Kingdom hotel with some of the Zimbabweans from shoestrings bar which I hear was quite an experience and made them feel quite white! ;-)
This country is very, very different from anything we've ever been to before, the whole money exchange thing is CRAZY and the notes even have expiry dates! I won't put it all down here but its one crazy crazy system! You have to be really careful!
The next day me, Val and Matt went on the lion walk at a nice early 6.30am which was pretty cool, we got
taken to the place which is about 8km away and working to try to save the lions by breeding them through 4 complicated stages, very cool! We walked alongside 2 female lions, both 16mths old for about an hour, taking lots of photos and holding their tales. Nanya was quite a bit more predictable than Nala and liked to roll over on people etc! They were pretty huge for 16mths! There is a male the same age but the guide explained he was a bit sick and grumpy today so we were quite happy to go without him ;-) It was cool to walk with them in their local habitat, and since its a big 5 area we had to have scouts with rifles go ahead of us in case of any unexpected encounters! Then we had a wicked cooked breakfast at the lodge and watched a video of the morning. When we got back to camp, Martin had moved most of our stuff to the Rest Camp, where our next tour starts, to join rest of our new tour group. It's a really nice camp, really big with lots of green grass and big trees and a nice big
swimming pool, very different from Shoestrings! and very nice! We spent the afternoon swimming, changed some money etc and had both lunch and dinner from truck with various new members of group. Our new guide and driver are 2 kenyan guys and they're really cool. After dinner our driver organised for a dance group to come along in full costume and perform traditional dancing and songs for us at our camp and they were pretty good! Then it was an early night because we were doing horseriding at 6.30am the following morning.
We did the horseriding today and it was really cool, we walked for 2 hours through national park on really nice horses and saw lots of warthogs, kudu, etc and came soooooooo close to MASSIVE buffalos! The first 2 we came across were 2 massive males and they were unbelievably huge. We got sooo close to them! You could never normally get this close but they see us as horses (people included) so dont charge - they are normally such dangerous animals! We also walked among a big herd of them - incredible! So far the rest of the day has been spent internetting, lounging around. Tomorrow
we leave for Zambia!
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