Hello everyone….it’s been a while since the last blog post but as many of you know, we’ve been in the Internet-less wilds of Africa for a few days. But now we have several “rest days” in Dar Es Salaam and then Zanzibar (on the beach) so we can catch you up on happenings over the last couple of weeks. So it’s travelogue time again – starting with our action-packed 48 hours in Victoria Falls. Our brief time in Zimbabwe and (even more briefly in Zambia) went something like this….

Tuesday
1pm – arrival at Victoria Falls Airport from Johannesburg, and landing some 15 minutes after we could first see the “Smoke (or the Cloud) That Thunders” which is the name the tribes long ago gave to the falls on account of the spray that rises high into the air from the Gorge….it must have been at least 50km away when we saw it first.
1.45pm – we get our ride to our hotel on the second attempt after having sat where we were told to by one ‘greeter’ who was not our driver, and who didn’t actually tell our driver we were there! So off the first van went without us, but no problem, as being on Africa Time means such things don’t matter….
2.15pm – arrival at The Kingdom Resort which is a very nice hotel indeed, with pools, a huge restaurant, a casino which we didn’t visit, and a greeting from a native warrior who threw down a cowhide for us to step onto like some kind of Zimbabwean red carpet. And all this just 500m or so from the Falls themselves, and about 200m from the early 20th century Victoria Falls Hotel where warthogs and baboons occupied the lawns and our tour guide who arranged our activities occupied the foyer.
3.45pm – pickup from the hotel and travel to the nearby helipad, where we boarded a Bell Long Ranger along with 4 German tourists for a 15 minute flight including 3 circuits above the Falls. What a sight, 70-110m high and 1.7km wide, and with of 1,000,000 cubic metres of water per second tipping off the edge (it is high water season at present) – it is VERY impressive…
4.15pm – back to the hotel for a swim, a drink, and dinner before a reasonably early night (we had had to get up at 3.30am in Cape Town that morning in order to meet our flight connections)

Wednesday
9.00am – breakfast before getting picked up for our next adventure
9.30am – arrival at the sheer cliff edge of the Zambezi River Gorge about 100m or so directly above the river and about 1.5km downstream from the Falls and the road/rail bridge. First activity: a flying fox across the gorge at cliff top level, right to the other side, diving off the edge face down with plenty of belts and buckles attached to your back. Second activity: a tandem Zip-trek ride at about 100km/h down to about 30m above the water (despite the rumours, there are no crocs as the water in the Gorge is too swift – they all live in the wider, placid waters above the Falls). Third activity, with the assistance of belts and braces man Sam (and there were plenty of belts and braces believe me!): the Gorge Swing. Or as the Activity List back at the hotel would have you believe, the George Swing! This one consisted of a step or leap off a cliff top platform, a 70m sheer free-fall drop before easing into a huge swing right out across the river, even closer to the water than the Zip-trek. It was truly brilliant, but just a tad scary as you fell straight down for a second or three, during which time gravity was in charge and the ropes and harnesses were just ornaments. Would we do it again? Too right!!
11.00am – time to walk to another country, so down to the Zimbabwean border post, around 500m or so from the middle of the bridge, fill in a form, and we were officially passport-stamped out of the country. Walk the 500m, and out onto the bridge, and soon enough you are at the middle, just near the bungy jump, and you can stand with one foot in Zimbabwe and one foot in Zambia. Speaking of the middle of the bridge, when it was built in 1905, it was one of the world’s highest bridges and was by all accounts quite an impressive engineering feat for its day. But the story goes that when it was nearly complete and the two sides were to be bolted together, no matter how hard they tried, they just would not line up and the project appeared to be a failure. So much so that the designer, distraught at what he thought were his mistakes having led to the whole thing becoming two useless piles of scrap metal, jumped from the structure to his death over 100m below in the river. Not too much later, a clever person on the construction team suggested that they should try the joining again at dawn before the heat of the day made the metal of the two halves expand and warp out of alignment, and guess what? It fitted perfectly, and is still in use as a major road and rail bridge today, 107 years later!
Noon – after walking the next 500m or so, we avoid the baboons in the car park, fill out more forms, hand over US$30 each and get passport-stamped into Zambia (country #9 so far this trip) and head for the National Park gate which leads to the walkway to the lip of the Falls. Another US$20 each there and we can enter the park and wander along the various walkways past the statue of David Livingstone who was the first white man to see the Falls back in 1856 (at the base of his statue is his quotation where he described the Falls as being like nothing any Englishman could ever hope to have seen – he was Scottish though – and something that “only angels in their flight” could haves seen); past the World War One war memorial; and past the man hiring out raincoats for the walk ahead. We had our own coats and we certainly needed them because we got VERY wet despite it being a 30degree day – the spray rising from the falls has to be seen (and felt) to be believed. There are occasional lulls in intensity but basically all the time we were on the point of land where the water drops into the gorge and then bends around towards the bridge, it was like being in a very heavy rainstorm. It’s no light misty spray, it is a full-on cloudburst! We went across the Knife’s Edge Bridge and got as wet as possible, and went very close to the edges in many places – apart from a few token guard rails, Zambia has no concept of any sort of safety regulations!
1pm – after a quick walk around to the river above the falls (where you can get as close as you like and people are allowed to walk – at their own risk – across the lip of the Falls), we reversed our journey through Zambian Immigration, across the bridge and past all the touts, and back through Zimbabwean Immigration, then back to the Hotel for the next pick-up. By the way, despite being soaked right though, we were 100% dry within minutes of starting back.
3.30pm – off for our Sunset Cruise on the Zambezi River which was a lot of fun….we met Germans, South Africans, Italians, and a Scottish lady who had been to Greenock two days before (that will only mean something to one person – you know who you are!)….and we saw hippos, and crocodiles, and gazelles, and all sorts of birds. We also saw, about 6pm, a very spectacular African sunset over the river, a view that was well worth the effort of going on the cruise.
7.30pm – dinner at the Kingdom Hotel, including the local fare of choumoulier and worms

Thursday
Pretty boring really – just a sleep in, breakfast, and then the shuttle back to the airport for a flight bak to Johannesburg

I’ll try and put some photos here but the Internet is so slow this attempt may fail. However, if they’re not there at first, keep trying, as I will eventually succeed!
Victoria Falls