Victoria Falls

After our week in Harare we were forced to drive to Victoria Falls, after being unable to get flights. It’s a long journey, so we broke it into two days, staying overnight in the nice town of Bulawayo. Before starting out on the second leg we took a short detour to a wildlife orphanage, which has an impressive array of animals. We petted rhinos and loads of very impressive lions, got to see our first leopard up real close (petting its tail even), as well as lots of cheeky monkeys, birds, owls and snakes.

Although the government is forcing all hotels to charge room rates in foreign currency for non-nationals, luckily for us both Mark and Ezeria are residents and so we’ve managed to pay the local rates, which are incredibly cheap - thereby allowing us to stay in one of the fanciest hotels. So we stayed in a $30 room at the five-star Kingdom Resort - non-residents were paying $250.

On going to see the mighty falls themselves, we all got well and truly soaked. No namby-pandy raincoats for us – even though the Zambezi isn’t in full flow at the moment, the falls still kick up an incredible spray of water, rising up a hundred and fifty metres or so, and then falling like rain. The views are truly magnificent, and luckily we were on the Zimbabwean side, which apparently offers far better viewing than the Zambian. Most of the viewing points are fairly well protected (to save the epsilons from themselves) but at one point myself and Ezeria clambered forward and then lay down and crawled up to the very edge to peer straight down over the gorge to the base of the falls and the raging river below (exactly like you do at the Cliffs of Moher or Inish Mor). Mark gave it a go too but couldn’t quite be persuaded to get his head out over the edge.

The next night Mark blagged a complimentary dinner for us all at the neighboring Victoria Falls Hotel through the wink-and-a-nod of an influential friend. It was a spectacular restaurant in probably the best hotel in all Zimbabwe (apparently all the rooms were full, so we couldn’t stay there). All very colonial and grand, although I didn’t have much of an appetite after we’d already had high-tea there earlier that afternoon. It was kinda weird that the best meal in the best surroundings of the whole trip so far just happened to be completely free - but there was certainly no complaining.