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Published: April 4th 2014
Friday March 21
We arrived in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe around noon. Everyone in the group chose to upgrade their rooms for the next 2 nights. Well, I guess really we upgraded our tent. No where to go but UP I say!!! Anyway, Timon had called ahead and booked 2 bedroom cottages for all of us and of course Dick and Sue and Rene and I shared this quaint little cottage.
It was so wonderful to a take our bags out of the overlander and reorganize them.
While I booked an activity with a tour company, Rene found a bank and then scouted around for a place to eat lunch. He found the Shoestring Backpackers Hostel and after booking my "Walk with the Lions" we went for lunch. What a great hostel! Most everything outside except for the sleeping quarters. Brightly painted furniture and a funky fun place. And the lunch was fantastic. Avocado and bacon Burger and a beer. Yummy!!!
Afer lunch while some went the the pool, I took the afternoon to check out the town. Some very quaint little shops and such friendly kind people. At 4 pm the bus picked us up and away we went for a
boat cruise up the Zambezi River. We were treated royally with food and drinks while we explored the banks and shallows of the river for wild-life. We saw a hippo and her baby, a sleeping crocodile, and a real parade of Elephants! We watched another African sunset and disembarked the boat.
Rene suggested that we all go for dinner to the Shoestring Hostel. Everyone thought that would be a good idea so off we went. Everyone loved the food and the atmosphere and while we were eating a group of male Afican dancers and singers came out to entertain. They were marvelous!
Sue and I went up to dance with them. Dancing was fun but oh my did they smell! Seriously, I have never smelled body odor that bad! We joked and thought deodorant must be VERY expensive in Victoria Falls. No problem tho... All part of the journey!
We were all quite tired so back to our little cabin about 11 pm.
Saturday March 22.
Some of us got up early to watch the sun rise on Victoria Falls. Victoria Falls is the world's second largest water falls. The path around the falls takes you on a 16
stop journey where each view point gave us a different perspective of the falls.
It was amazingly beautiful!!!!
After the falls Rene and I went back to our cabin, had a quick bite to eat and I went to the reception area to wait for the shuttle to take me, Michelle and Brendan and Marlenna to "Walk with the Lions"
The Walk with the Lions was magnificent. We got to walk alongside 2 lion sisters who were 18 months old. We all got to pet and talk with the girls. They were so beautiful and seemingly so tame........ Ahhhh but don't be fooled my friends, there were at least 6 lion guards and even one guy with a gun.... Just in case!!!
After our walk and pet we watched a video of how the lion population is being rapidly decreasing due to poaching, the human population pushing them out of thier natural habitats and that the lions eat diseased cows and die. Very sad situation. Learned lots about lions, but one interesting fact is that since 1975 the lion population has decreased by 80-90%. Shocking for sure!! Estimate is that there are only 32, 000 lions left in Africa.
We
were back to the cabin about 1:00 pm. While I was gone, Rene spent some time out and about in town, then found a sunny place to read on the grass in the sun, hooked up to WIFI, found his favorite Paradise Radio station from the USA, Sue went for a massage and shopping at the curio market, Dick went to the pool and we all had a great morning. Oh and I forgot an important part of life in Victoria Falls. Timon told is that the local people like to trade our goods for what they own. Anything that we wanted to get rid of we should barter with. So Rene had a couple of T-shirts that he didn't want anymore so he bartered his shirts for 70 million Zimbabwe dollars. Zimbabwe as a country is financially a mess. They attempted to boost the economy by printing ridiculous currency. So now this currency isn't used anymore but it is a souvenir that is sought after here in Zimbabwe . Of course there is more to the story but I don't know it all. Anyway its kinda fun for tourists.
After a little lay down for about am hour Rene
and I went for walk. Michelle from our group had booked a jump over the gorge so we thought we should go and watch her. As we were walking we met up with Paul another guy from our group and off the 3 of us went to find and watch Michelle. There is a bridge that spans the gorge and we assumed that's where she would be so we headed to the bridge. It took much longer than we expected as we had to show our passports because half the bridge is in Zambia. We got our visitor stamp and proceeded to the bridge. As we were walking the mist from the falls got heavier and heavier and pretty soon we were soaking wet. We got to the bridge directly above the gorge and the mist stopped soaking us. On the bridge we got to see the the falls from a different angle again and they were beautiful from the bridge as well. We even got to see the perpetual rainbow that is present at the falls. We took lots of pictures and walked on the Zambia side for a bit. We kept an eye out for Michelle but never
did find her. After being spellbound by the falls for an hour or so we headed back to town. Just as we were heading back to our campsite we saw Michelle also walking back. It appears she was at a different area and we would not have been able to see her do her jump. We all were getting a bit hungry so we decided to go back one more time to the Shoestring for an early dinner.
While eating dinner I decided to take advantage of the inexpensive massage. $25 for a full body, hour long massage. I found the gal and behind the curtain I went. For the next hour and a half these wonderful hands kneaded and pulled at my weary, tight and sore muscles. It was marvelous!!! Back at the campsite Sue and I joked that we really got 2 treatments in one. We got massaged but also got an exfoliation treatment as well. Both our massage therapists had very callused hands. Probably massage is not their only job!!
Back at camp everyone else was ready to go out for dinner. Since Rene and I had recently eaten we chose not to go and Skyped with
the kids back home and then off to bed.
Sunday March 23
We had a little sleep in and didn't have to leave until about 9:30.
I didn't get to experience the art of trading anything and I had this awful pair of pants that I thought i should trade for a giraffe souvenir. Rene was out in town early and found a guy that wanted to make a trade, so before we left Rene and I met this young fella at the gate and sure enough he had a cute little giraffe carving with him. So me with my ugly green pants and him with his giraffe and Rene as the negotiator made the trade. The young man was happy to have the pants but what he really wanted was money. We had a few coins and Rene had this old pocket knife and we gave him all we had in our pockets. So strange but kinda fun too.
Back into the Overlander as we were off to Chobe National Park in Botswana. We drove about an hour and stopped to enter the Country of Botswana. Upon entering Botswana we all had to take the shoes we
were wearing and 1 pair of our extra shoes and step (and put our extra shoes) on a mat that had an insecticide liquid that helped to keep hoof and mouth disease out of the country.
Botswana is flat, and up to 70% is covered by the Kalahari Desert. This desert is mostly inhabited by livestock and approximately 71% of the country's land is used for communal grazing. Most of the desert then, I'd say. Cattle and donkeys everywhere!!! No fences to be seen and some of the cows and donkeys seem to like to hang out on the highway. At times I thought we were going to have donkey steak for dinner!! That is how close Fitz, our driver got to making Overlander to donkey contact. Certainly slowed our speeding Fitz down a little!!! Botswana also has the world's largest diamond mine. This mine was not on the tour!!! Darn! The currency used in Botswana is called a Pula and it is about 8 Pula to one American dollar.
We arrived at our campsite at about 3:30 pm and after setting up our tent we went the the pool to await our sunset boat cruise on the
Ngoma River. Actually there are 2 rivers that converge but the rivers are in 2 different countries Zambia and Botswana. The 2 countries have an agreement that while with tourists on the boat cruises no one needs to produce their passports. We saw so many animals on this boat cruise. We saw 2 young elephants that came down to the water to drink just as we were cruising by. We were only about 10 meters away. The elephants put on quite a show for us, drinking and splashing themselves. We stayed and admired them for quite a while. Next we saw a big hippo in the water. We saw more impalas, kudus, more elephants, more hippos, a crocodile and then the final show of the evening was the most amazing sunset I have ever seen. It was stunning. And with the calm waters and wild animals in the for-ground it was a sight we shall not soon forget.
With beautiful desert and sunset views etched in our memories, we called it a night.
And so my Family and Friends
"STAY WELL"
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Kairsty
non-member comment
CRAZY!!!!!!
Your a crazy lady.