Hold on Tight and Let's Get Out of Here

Monday 25^th July – Zimbabwe

We’ve had a few busy days of travel but are now well settled here in Zimbabwe.

Saturday it was clean the car, do the laundry, return the car, repack the suitcases (everything loose in the car needed to go back in) and head to the airport. Paris airport is not a place you want to spend a lot of time waiting. Eating options are very limited and really fall into the fast food category, duty free shopping was average, and waiting areas just average. Unfortunately our flight was delayed 2 hours so a 3 hour wait turned into a 5 hour wait. I had some sewing and my kindle so passed the time OK. Rob had a couple of naps.

Flight to Frankfurt was quick, a quick transfer because we were late, and on our way to Johannesburg. Apparently the earlier flight was late because of thunderstorms over Germany and their policy that if there is storm activity then all airport activity is on hold. There is also an 11pm curfew at Frankfurt so as the pilot said, hold on tight and let’s get out of here. It’s a long flight to Johannesburg (10 hours) and was quite bumpy at times, but we arrived in Johannesburg on time.  Another transfer to our flight to Victoria Falls, and finally we were here after 36 hours on the go.

Our hotel last night was quite good – good aircon, a short walk to town and next to the craft and curio market. Yesterday we just ate, had a nap, short walk around the market and in to town for dinner.

This was one of the African shops near the hotel.

Next door to the hotel were three cages with crocodiles in them. You could have an experience and go underwater in a cage to swim with the crocodiles. No thanks. This albino crocodile was at least 12ft long and is 50.

One of the warthogs wandering the hotel area.

Today we have transferred to the tour hotel for one night (we leave on the tour in the morning) and been into Victoria Falls to explore the town. We had afternoon tea on the terrace of the Victoria Falls Hotel where you can see the ‘smoke’ from the falls and the bungee jumping and zip lines from the bridge. Afternoon tea was pretty amazing.

Our hotel - teh A'Zambezi River Lodge. Our room had a view of the Zambezi river. Definitely no swimming in the river. We thought about a swim in the pool but the water was far too cold.

The Victoria Falls hotel where we had afternoon tea on the terrace. This is a very colonial style hotel. Lots of English people out on the terrace, and 'Sam' tinkling the ivories in the lounge. 

View of the bridge from the terrace - it was a very hazy day so our photos are not great, but enough to prompt our memories.

When we arrived at the hotel we ran into a family from Newcastle (mum, dad and 20yo daughter) who we sat next to on the plane. Turns out they are on the same tour as us.  Just talking briefly to them and turns out one of their bags had the locks taken off and had been rifled, and Rob’s backpack also had the locks taken off though if they’d rifled it they left it pretty tidy. Nothing valuable in it and nothing missing but either Johannesburg airport or Victoria Falls has some dodgy baggage handlers. We were actually surprised our bags arrived because we checked them through from Paris and after the delay and short connection we weren’t too sure.

We have a few animals wandering the grounds of the hotel – baboons, warthogs and banded mongoose. Tonight we have our tour meeting and then we are going to a Boma dinner with music and drumming and local food. Should be great.

A banded mongoose in the hotel grounds. There was a large family of them.

What's for dinner? The baboons are very mischeivious. The security guards carry slingshots to shoo the baboons.

First impressions of Africa - the country is very dry and the predominant colour is yellow. The grass (such as it is) is yellow, and the dirt is yellow. Most of the trees are quite stunted and our taxi driver told us it is because the elephants tear the tops off for food when it is so dry. The town reminds us a little of Bali of 15 years ago - quite rustic and 'unmade'. Lots of people standing around trying to interest you in their crafts and their shops and all with an 'early morning price'. We didn't buy anything today - we don't want to carry it all over Africa for 3 weeks. But I must say there are some lovely carvings of both stone and wood. Where we were staying last night we found FedEx and DHL - ready to ship home the big stone carvings we buy at the market!