Victoria Falls

A long drive from Lake Malawi took us to Victoria falls, through Zambia but more importantly via.... a Nandos (happy day after a month of truck food) in the capital of Malawi - Lilongwe.

At our campsite in Zambia a campsite where we went wandering in the adjacent bush and saw Kudu crossing the path only metres from us and impala as well. We had been warned about buffalo but luckily didn't meet any. Amazing to see animals like this roaming free. From there we journeyed through the capital of Zambia (Lusaka) finally arriving into Livingstone (Vic falls on the Zambia side). A few people from our truck, including Sean and myself, went on one of the highlights of the trip so far, a sunset river cruise on the Zambezi with the added highlight of a free bar and braai. Seeing hippos on the side of this massive river, and elephant crossing at sunset with only their trunks popping up for air every few seconds were once in a lifetime sights. The sunset on the Zambezi was one of the best we have seen - the African skies certainly are a sight. This was a lovely almost end to our tour, laughing with the others who had joined us. Sean paid the price for his rediscovery of one of the drinks of his youth - cane (sugar cane spirit) & coke (otherwise known as a spook and diesel)!!

The following day took us to the Zimbabwe side of Victoria Falls. A slight apprehension about this given the sad state of the country and how it is being ruled proved unfounded for us at least - we both found Zim to be our favourite country so far (Victoria Falls is almost not part of the country due to the tourism and proximity to Botswana and Zambia improving the supply of food etc, but we can still count it for this purpose!). All of the Zimbabweans we met stood out as genuine, friendly and helpful people. Our first night was spent at a campsite with the rest of the truck -our last official day. We spent the afternoon at Victoria Falls. The falls are amazing, the breadth of the falls takes a long time to walk, they are so big and due to the recent rain the amount of water crashing through the cataracts was just immense. The power and force it crashes through with is unbelievable and the spray is massive! Standing in the direction of the wind is like standing in the pouring rain, I felt like a little kiddie being allowed to splash in the puddles and stand in the rain! I was loving it!!! I can see why it is one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. It was such a shame to see so few tourists enjoying it due to the political instability, as Sean says the Zim side is much more spectacular than the Zambian side which was full of tourists.

Our last night with the truck was spent at the Spur for dinner - costing a mere 8.2 billion (Zim $) for 20 of us!! It took over half an hour just to count the money and the restaurant to check it....monopoly money worth more! Even in Vic Falls where food is more readily available than the rest of Zim the menu was more limited than any other Spur, and the poor guys who ordered burgers felt quite short changed when all they got was the patty (no burger buns or bread available).

We spent the next day, 5th of April, looking at the curio market, marvelling at the woodwork & artwork. Very sad that these guys will give you a stunning carving for a packet of biscuits or some of your clothes... I had a rather unusual massage in the front garden of a resort and Sean joined other guys from our truck in an 'adrenalin afternoon', consisting of flying fox (line over the gorge, harnessed attached so you face down into the gorge), zip line & gorge (bungee) swing. Having seen how deep the gorge was the previous day, I reckon it is some serious adrenalin that goes on during these! Sadly the water levels of the Zambezi were too high for water rafting, third attempt by Sean here and he struck out at all three attempts. Arriving back intact, Sean and I left the group to head off to our hotel for the next few days - a surprise venue for me. Our taxi pulled up at the amazing Elephant Hills hotel, further into Vic falls. After a month of 'roughing it', this was pure luxury - even being greeted with champagne on arrival. A beautiful hotel, amazingly efficiently staffed and a wonderful treat to finish our African adventure with. What was wonderful to see was that despite all going on in the country they maintained the 5-star quality of the hotel.

Spending a couple of nights in the hotel, watching TV, having warm showers and eating in the restaurant was a world away from the camping of the last month. We were treated to a couple of highlights of which the best was probably a group of African singers in the restaurant (kind of Ladysmith black mambazo style) singing and dancing, including happy birthday to one of the other guests (who was 2!). We also took a walk through the hotels golf course and even saw the resident crocs, waterbuck, impala and vervet monkeys. We even had their monkey friends on our balcony trying to get into the room!.

We left this section of our trip on the 7th, flying into Johannesburg where we were met by Sean's mom -now for the the next leg of our travels…

Well, lots of love again. Us xx