Day 1 ... a day of ups and downs

Thursday 19th September

Today was our first full day in Southern Africa. When I last left off we were being indulgent in the Shongololo Lounge. We had a lovely 3 hours there ... snacking our way through the buffet and being able to recharge our batteries.

After our allocated 3 hours we left the lounge and headed to the gate for our final flight to Victoria Falls. We were bussed out to the plane, and boarded really efficiently and then ... sat on the tarmac for another half an hour because of air traffic congestion.

Finally we were airborne and on our way. The pilot planted the foot (or whatever they do) and we landed in Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe just after 2.00pm.

And then the fun really began! After disembarking the plane we were all temperature checked and ushered into queues depending on what type of Visa we wanted. We were after a Kaza uniVisa which would give us multiple entries into and out of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana.

The queue was long (as were all of the queues) and the process was very antiquated. One woman took our money and wrote up receipts (by hand) whilst a second woman then wrote up the actual visa – again by hand ... to then stick it into our passports. We stood in this queue for about an hour and a quarter! We got to know our fellow queuers quite well!

Finally, with visas firmly in hand we headed through the gates to collect our luggage where it was scanned and then that was it! We didn’t need to go through passport control or security or customs ... hello and welcome to Zimbabwe.

At this stage we are super late! We had organised a driver to pick us up at the airport to take us to our hotel. Thankfully he was still waiting for us! He drove us into town, stopping to pick his mate who needed a lift back into town. We arrived at our hotel at about 4.10 pm and by the time we had checked in and were shown our room we had 15 minutes to unlock our cases, get changed, go to the bathroom, and pack what we needed for the evening before we had to head back to reception to meet our driver for the evening excursion.

Tobeki drove us to the river where we joined our Sunset dinner cruise on the Zambezi River. We were treated to a four course meal ... including ostrich (which looks and tastes like lamb), singing by the staff as well as views of elephants, warthogs, hippos and crocodiles. The sunset over the river was exquisite ... a glorious red sun and pink skies.