Day 2 … exploring the falls and a little hiding

After crashing out early last night after our lovely dinner cruise we were both awake just after 6.30 am so decided we may as well get going! The temperature was expected to reach the high 30s (that’s celsius for my US friends) and with a lot of walking planned we thought we might get ahead of the heat.

Breakfast was included with our hotel accommodation so we had a lovely breakfast with eggs made to order, bacon, sausages, a savoury mince, steamed vegetables, crispy potatoes and homemade baked beans on offer. There were also cereals (why bother when you have such wonderful alternatives), cakes and scones also available plus fresh fruit and wonderful hot coffee.

 

After breakfast we headed off for our day. We walked into the township and passed the rest camp that Ian stayed in 34 years ago … he was able to spy the small stone BBQ that he stuffed his backpack into and then slept with his head in the opening! It’s at the foot of the distant tree in the final photo below. Things have definitely changed now … as we have magnificent accommodation!

We visited the information centre … not that they had a lot to offer us. Thankfully Ian had meticulously planned out our day and so the absence of any further information or maps didn’t cause us too many problems.

We walked to Victoria Falls National Park … paid our entry fee and headed in to explore the falls. The park has a well maintained path that takes you to 16 viewing locations along the falls. Being us … we began at the beginning and wandered along stopping at each view point to marvel at the falls. Being later in the year the falls were not at their peak but even late in the year they are absolutely spectacular.

We stopped to see the statue of Livingstone, the Devil’s Cataract, Main Falls, Horsehoe Falls, Rainbow Falls and Danger Point. We loved being sprayed by the mist, loved the sound of the water cascading over the sheer cliff faces, hearing the chirping of birds, being able to spy monkeys and deer, and witnessing a gentle rainbow (hello my beautiful Mumma). We also witnessed the crazy people who participated in the activity that takes you into the river (on the Zambian side) and you get to play in the water pools literally 1 metre from the top of the falls (absolutely bonkers!)

At the end point for the walk you can watch people white water rafting in the rapids at the base of the gorge, as well as those brave (foolish) folk abseiling off the rock wall or even more foolish those jumping off the bridge as they bungee into the gorge above the Zambezi River.

We wandered back along the path again, avoiding the short cuts to the exit, enjoying the water dropping on our heads, and stopped to marvel at the falls again before heading out of the park and moving on to the next part of our adventure, which was to walk from Zimbabwe into Zambia. This would involve exiting Zimbabwe through immigration and entering Zambia … again through immigration. However, in the middle of that is this no man’s land that is the Victoria Falls Bridge (where the ning nongs are bungee jumping from).

This bridge spans the Zambezi River and connects Zimbabwe and Zambia. This steel bridge was constructed in 1905 and was built to allow the trains to travel throughout central Africa. Today it is a single lane bridge with a railway line. It is the major transport link between the two countries and on both sides of the bridge the freight trucks line up to wait their turn to cross through immigration and customs. We saw trucks waiting up to 3 hours!

For us though we were able to walk across the bridge, stopping to admire the gorge below (Ian, with his fear of heights, was white knuckled as we stopped to look down into the gorge). As with all walking today we were regularly accosted by well meaning locals trying to get us to look at their curios and wanting to sell us sculptures, 100 trillion dollar notes (Google the Zimbabwean economy!) or to offer us a taxi ride. They are harmless … they do a soft sell and soon realise that we are not going to stop so just wish us a good day and then drop behind to leave us alone.

Immigration was surprisingly easy after the visa events at the airport yesterday. You walk into the immigration building … get your passport stamped … get it checked again at the gate post … and off you go! 

Once in Zambia we headed to the Mosi-oa-tunya National Park. Here we again purchased our entry tickets (beautiful tickets!) and then walked to the park and entered to view Victoria Falls from the Zambian side. It was now about 11.30 in the morning and HOT, HOT, HOT! There was very little shade and very little water spray … and we were feeling the heat.

The walk took us over Knife Edge Bridge, to several viewing spots along the way and provided amazing views of the sheer cliff faces of the earth’s fissure. Again in the high season these are not visible as they are covered in cascading water so we were amazed at how jagged they were. We also passed another statue of Livingstone, and climbed a very steep set of stairs that almost killed us both!

At this point we’re almost done. It was 37 degrees and we had been going since 6.30. We decided to forgo walking all the way back and negotiated a taxi to take us across the bridge to the immigration post (where he could take us no further). We transited through … re-entering Zimbabwe where we grabbed another taxi to take us back into the township of Victoria Falls. Our second driver (Justice) was excited when he heard we were Australian as someone had paid him in Australian dollars so he asked if he could do some money changing … which we happily obliged.

Arriving back into town we stopped at a local bakery and grabbed some lunch (a lasagne pie and a chicken and mushroom pie … that both looked like pasties!) and a couple of cokes and then we sat outside on the steps watching the world go by (and returning our elevated heart rates to a normal beat). We then caught the local shuttle bus back to our hotel … and headed to the pool … ah bliss!

Back to the room … a snooze for Ian and a chance for me to start writing the blog before we headed off to our next adventure … which was to visit Siduli Hide. My sister Nicolle and her daughter Chelsea had visited last year and had the most amazing experience so we were quick to jump on the opportunity. 

We were met by our guide Eleman and the ranger (Aaron) at our hotel and they took us to the hide which is located at Victoria Falls Safari Lodge. The hide itself is an Adobe bunker built down beside a waterhole. We were there for just over 2 hours … with Eleman sitting with us and identifying every species as they emerged. He fed us lovely snacks, cool drinks and we shared many laughs. Whilst we did not see any elephants or water buffalo, we did see 18 species of bird, impala and a very active crocodile. It was fabulous!

Eleman and Aaron dropped us back in the township where we ate with the locals … at the local takeaway. We enjoyed a delicious pizza, Ian had a lime milkshake and I tried a Grape Fizzi (proudly made in Zimbabwe). We then walked home (sorry Nic!) in the dark … but it was only a few hundred metres so we were fine!

And so ends our day. Tomorrow we have a day trip to Botswana so it will be a very early morning!