We’re taking an easy day in Cape Town, so hopefully I can catch up on these posts a little bit.
We left Londolozi and were driven out to the Nelspruit airport where we caught our plane to Livingstone, Zambia. It had been chilly and raining in Nelspruit, so it was quite a shock to climb off the plane and walk across the tarmac in 100 degree intense sun. From there we drove out to our hotel, about an hour away along a pretty good stretch of highway, through a national park where we saw elephants, giraffes and baboons from the car. The last 8 km to the hotel were over a washboard dirt road which our driver was taking at about 90kph.
Arriving at the hotel, we were told that we’d been upgraded to the island lodge a little ways up the Zambezi river, so after checking in and looking around a bit, took a 10 minute boat ride to the island. It seemed like they were consolidating the three couples staying at the two hotels into one to simplify things, which was just fine by us, since we got a great bungalow looking out over a small tributary with enough privacy that there was a bath tub on the deck. A
Shortly after getting settled, we left for a sunset cruise a little ways down the river. Unfortunately, what we didn’t know was the the opposite side of the river was part of a big reserve in Zimbabwe (the river is the boundary between Zambia and Zimbabwe, and I think Botswana and Namibia a little ways down as well.) Expecting to see a sunset, and not much else, I’d failed to bring my big lens, and just brought my 17-55mm. Of course, that was the day when we saw three male lions hanging out on the shore.
This was really quite a treat for us, since the only male lion we’d seen so far was pretty much just napping in the middle of the road and was at night. The other passenger on the boat, a nice guy from Germany via Switzerland hadn’t seen any lions in his few weeks in Africa yet, so he was ecstatic.
And of course, there was the sunset. Every night was a vibrant red sunset, and what better place to see it than on a boat with drink in the middle of the river.
The next day was Victoria falls. On the way out there, going back through the reserve, we saw a Zebra Crossing:
First we went to the park overlooking the falls from the Zambia side. It was the dry season, so it wasn’t the huge wall of water that it can be, but they were still pretty spectacular. There were probably about 9 falls going at the time which is nothing to complain about.
We also took a short helicopter ride to see them from above. Finally, we took a boat ride out to Livingstone Island, which is right on the edge of the cliff, roughly in the center of frame in the above photo, just next to the really big waterfall creating all of the mist. On the boat ride out, you approach this cloud of mist on the river, which is of course where the waterfall is. Just as we started to question the wisdom of being in a boat headed straight for this, we pulled up to shore on the island. We were taken out to the edge of the cliff, to look over the gorge and the waterfall. Our guide stuck us on a rock about two feet away from the edge for a series of photos that he was quite practiced at taking. Then it was time for the Devil’s Pool, which we were both getting pretty nervous about at this point. To get there we swam across a narrow bit of river about 10 yards from the waterfall, and while it was never a problem every time the current pulled at me just a little bit I had a minor freak out. Then we just had to climb over a few rocks to get to a little pool on the very edge of the main waterfall. We had two guides at this point, one came with us into the pool, presumably to make sure that we didn’t find ourselves out of the pool and in the waterfall. The other walked on the edge of the waterfall and took pictures with Jack’s camera of us sitting on a little shelf of rock also on the edge of the waterfall and of the waterfall itself.
While in the pool, trying to not have a stupid look on my face for the pictures, and of course worrying about being there in the first place, a fish decided it wanted to nibble at my feet, so I kept having to move around a bit to scare it away.
Once we were safely back on land, we had a nice lunch, thankfully with beer, under a tent on the island with a bunch of other tourists and headed back.