Steph's Adventures Near and Far: Zimbabwe

We left Botswana and travelled to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. It was a bit of a process as we had to have a driver from Botswana take us to the Zimbabwe border to hand us off to the driver from Zimbabwe. He waited with us while we waited to pay for our visas and receive entry into the country.

Here, they write the visas by hand. So every person coming through has to get a stamp and hand written visa in their passport. You also have to pay for a visa based on where you live. For ordinary visas it's $US30 (American, European, Australian, etc) for people from the UK and Ireland it's $US50, and for Canadians it's $US75. I have no idea why we have to pay so much?? Especially with our exchange to the American dollar, we took a hit here.

You're standing in very close quarters and so you could easily converse with the person beside you, if appropriate. The British fellow beside us basically made a comment that we have to pay so much because we are too nice! Ha ha! We laughed and I said "Do you get to be "ordinary" today?" He had quite a mixture of passports in his travelling group, so we weren't sure which visa he needed. He was laughing but then the Zimbabwe customs officials were laughing too! Good thing! I always manage to say things at the wrong times and customs and security are not places you should usually make jokes! Good thing everyone was in a good mood ha ha!

Our tour guide Shimbiso was wonderful and shared lots of information between the border and the town of Victoria Falls. He delivered us safely to our hotel, which is lovely, and wished us well.

We once again enjoyed our welcome drinks and got settled into another location :) There are warthogs, monkeys and banded mongoose wandering the property. All the while, you can hear the rush of the falls and we can even see the mist/spray of the falls from our balcony! It's a pretty cool location!

Our first night we did a sundowner cruise on the Zambezi River. We met some wonderful people from Perth, Australia. We also got to enjoy some wildlife like a baby croc, some hippos up close, a couple of elephants, and lots of birds of course. We are starting to get some of our bird names down actually, since we have seen so many, and have studied a bird book :) And as with each and every night, we enjoyed another spectacular African sunset.

Our first full day was full on, as usual :) We started our day with a tour of Victoria Falls. It is a Unesco World Heritage Site, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, and is also called Mosi-oa-Tunya in the local language. It is 108m high and is 1,708m wide.

The falls were an amazing site to see and to be there and just take it all in was incredible! The roar, the spray, the natural beauty... We loved it!

We explored the town a bit after our morning excursion, which for me wasn't exactly enjoyable. The town is sooo touristy and there are locals approaching you to book a trip or buy something from them constantly. For someone who hasn't experienced that a lot, I found it very uncomfortable. The shops are expensive since everything is in American dollars.

Zimbabwe is struggling right now and some people have said that since the country changed their currency to the American dollar, that has caused a lot of it, but there are other problems of course too. Some say that even the African people are not travelling to Zimbabwe as much due to the costs. It's very unfortunate for the people here as there is beauty all around.

In the afternoon, we were very fortunate to be able to experience a lion encounter. We were able to walk with and pet 2 lions, sisters Leela and Lalipani. They are 8 months old and are part of a repopulation program. The lion population in Africa has declined due to hunting, poaching and disease. This program aims to breed lions in a step by step process to the point where lions who have been part of the lion encounter program, will be released into a semi wild area where they will breed and produce lion cubs who will be released directly into the wild, thus helping to repopulate the lion population. It was such an incredible experience and I know I loved every second of it! If you'd like more info, check out lionalert.org

Our next day was just a lazy day in Zimbabwe as it was our first rest day since we started this amazing adventure! We had a lazy breakfast, relaxed by the pool, had a nap and charged everything up for our trip tomorrow.

Today we leave Zimbabwe and travel back to Johannesburg where we will spend the next few days. We have 2 full days of tours booked there and are interested to learn about the history of the area.

The African adventure continues...

Looking back at the main lodge from our balconies.