In the afternoon we walked into Victoria Falls proper to find some food. It was a 30 min walk and on the way we saw baboons, monkeys, and warthogs. They told us we can't walk at night since there are other dangerous animals (like lions). They said 2 weeks ago there were elephants walking through downtown Vic Falls! On the walk we also saw lots of little kids who waved at us and said hi. Several of them came up to us to tell us how pretty and handsome we were. Awe...
We found a restaurant which was recommended to us by our hostess, The Three Monkeys. It was pretty good. I had a pizza and Matt got a meat dish which had beef, impala, and zebra. After dinner we stopped at a grocery store to get a snack for the next couple of days and then we got a taxi back to the airbnb. It's interesting that they use USD as their currency here, so that's kind of weird. Although we've been approached several times by people trying to get us to by their original currency for a souvenir. we've been offered a 5 billion bill, for only $2!
The next day we walked back into town to check out the famous Victoria Falls (the waterfall, not the town). It was pretty expensive to get in- $30/person. It was really cool though. It's known as one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World and one of the biggest waterfalls in the world. "Big" is defined in several ways, but this one is very wide and has a ton of water volume go through. I read a stat that read New York City's annual water consumption goes over the falls in just 3.5 days!
They suggest spending 1-2 hours there and based on our experience that sounds about right. They have about 17 different viewpoints along the falls so you can see lots of different parts of it. I kept thinking the views kept getting better and better. Since it is the time of year where there is more water we did get pretty wet in some areas from the mist that gets thrown up. In some areas when the wind would switch directions we got downright poured on. We were sprinting and ended up completely soaked but it was totally worth it. Pro-tip: bring an umbrella or poncho or something!! Seriously. The upside to all of the mist though is that we got to see beautiful rainbows over the falls. It was gorgeous! I have never been to Niagra Falls or seen any particular huge waterfalls so I really wasn't prepared for how beautiful this was going to be. Highly recommend it!
Beginning of the falls, with a rainbow!
It gets wider, trust me...
After we got soaked:
Part of the falls is also in Zambia, but we didn't go see it from there since we didn't get multiple-entry visas so we would've had to pay again to re-enter Zimbabwe. If we had though about it in advance we might've done that, but oh well. Instead though, we were able to walk out of Zimbabwe to the bridge that crosses to Zambia. We just told them we wanted to go to the bridge and they gave us a gate pass and didn't stamp us out (if you want to do this though you must bring your passport). So we walked over to the bridge in order to see from over there, and this was free. I technically crossed the line on the bridge into Zambia but I didn't go so far to get close to going through border patrol or anything. The bridge is where the famous Bungee Jump is as well. I was super tempted to do it and even went over to talk to them, but I ended up not because it's just so expensive and we've spent a ton of money recently on our safaris. It was a really beautiful place to do it though, and I saw Will Smith jumped there just a few weeks ago!
The bridge to Zambia!
We walked back across the bridge and back into Zimbabwe where we found a baboon who literally scooted under the border fence before our eyes. He clearly has no respect for border control! Then we walked back into town for some food before catching a cab back to our airbnb.
The next day we checked out of our airbnb and caught our transfer across the border to the Livingstone airport. Our airbnb host was kind enough to arrange the transfer for us. It was a bit expensive though and after the fact we wondered if maybe we should've just taken a cab to the border and hoped another cab would be on the other side to take us on to the airport. But oh well.
Getting into Zambia was more expensive than we originally thought as well, so we probably should've just flown out of Vic Falls and never went into Zambia at all. But oh well, live and learn! We got to see the falls from the plane!
Anyway, we arrived in Jo'burg right on time. We had a really long layover before our connection to Dubai, so once again I was very thankful that we had access to lounges. We spent 5 hours in the Shongolo lounge and were able to take a nap, use the wifi, call our moms, take a shower, and eat and drink as much as we wanted. I was incredibly grateful for that shower.
Our 8-hr flight to Dubai was on a double-decker plane! I've always wanted to ride one of those, although we weren't able to go on the top level. Maybe a future trip. It was cool though. We flew Emirates so that was really nice. Great entertainment options, lots of movies, good drink selection, (relatively) good food (for a plane). And we arrived in Dubai on time so success!
We're only in Dubai for 36 hours before flying on to Cairo. So I'll let ya'll know how that goes!
Oh, I was finally able to get all of our photos from the safari uploaded to the album, Part 3! Check 'em out!
No comments:
Post a Comment