Blogs from Zimbabwe, Africa - page 2

Hello readers. We are happy to report that today was our last early wake up. We're glad we did it, though, as departing from our lodge at 6:00 meant we had the opportunity to spend some time with orphan elephants. The reserve we visited was home to ten elephants who had been orphaned. Most of their mothers died during Zimbabwe's most recent droughts. We were given information about their care and how they had been saved from certain death, but also that they had lost their fear of people, which meant they could never really succeed in the wild. Trained only with positive reinforcement, they knew their names and each other well. Our ground leader led us on a trail around the reserve and each elephant had a handler/driver who filled us in on the individual ... read more

Well, what a contrast of two successive mornings. After an overnighter in Joburg, we were due to take the short flight to Livingstone, Zambia (gateway to the Victoria Falls) leaving around 10.30 am. We duly arrived at the airport around 7.30am to be greeted by a mammoth ‘peasouper’ fog and a flight schedule board full of ‘delayed’ status on almost every flight, including ours. After an hour or so, the fog lifted and planes got away, but not ours. We were then designated ‘delayed indefinitely’ with no indication of when a plane and crew would become available. Eventually, the former landed but apparently the crew had worked their designated hours and they had to track down a new crew. To cut a long story short, they suddenly listed our gate number and time and scrambled us ... read more

We had deliberately not taken in the falls yesterday afternoon when we arrived. For one thing there is a USD30 each entry fee and it is for one admission only. So we decided to hold off until this morning our visit to tick off another of the Seven Wonders of the World. Flying in to Living stone yesterday the pilot had announced as we were in our descent that the falls would be visible from the right side of the aircraft. Where were we on the aircraft you may ask? The left side !and belted in for landing ! So today will be our first sighting of one of the greatest sights one can imagine when it comes to looking at geographical views. We had established from a map that there is a rain forest to ... read more

Again we didn’t a wakeup call for breakfast and then a ride to the airport for our flight to Livingstone, Zambia as we are now well in the mode of waking well before dawn. In saying that the sleep we do have is solid and we generally seem to last the day without a ‘nana’ nap in the afternoon. O R Tambo airport is spacious and modern and we got some help from a woman at the automatic check in machine to get our boarding passes. We had done everything else ignoring the chance for an upgrade on the flight to business class where the lowest bid was USD85 that you could make for the upgrade. What do you think they take us for? There was heaps of leg room and the economy seats were generously ... read more

So about half of us got up to head to breakfast before our day's Rhino Trek at Matobo National Park. The service was quite slow (though food still good), so we had to rush back to the hostel to wait for our ride. And who turned out to be our guide? Jordan!!! He was back to fill our heads with more information and give us a good time. So, we piled into the truck, this time I sat in the middle since I had claimed an edge on the last time, but I sat in back (I liked being able to stand, better views and more comfortable and adventurous!). Jordan said it was a half hour ride, but at around half an hour I wondered if that was "African time" - it was not too far ... read more