Day 17:

This blog entry starts a bit…challenging. Keep reading. It gets better.

Thursday, November 14th was a travel day. And it was vexing to say the least. We flew from Kruger in South Africa to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Seems innocuous enough at first blush. We kept reminding ourselves that we needed to get some cash before we left. We were down to about $30 total. That was American. We had maybe 10 ZAR as well (South African Rands). That's worth about 60 cents in US dollars. But we got too busy and didn't get the cash.

I had my flights mixed up. I thought we were flying into Zambia and out of Zimbabwe. It was the other way around. And I didn't research what was required to fly into Zimbabwe. I researched Zambia. Zimbabwe requires cash for their visa. And because the Zimbabwe dollar has devalued to nothing, they only accept US dollars or ZAR. We needed a two entry Visa for each of us. The two entry Visa was $45. We had $30 US cash. We needed $90. We needed $60 just to get into the country at all. We had $30. Did I mention that we had $30? We had $30. Not $60. We're standing in the darn line for immigration and I'm imagining that I’m going to be Tom Hanks in Terminal.

Some super-kind folks in front of us gave us $30 US. When we got to the counter I asked how much it would be for a two entry visa. I told the officer we only had $60. I asked if we could come back and get the other entry. The lady took a look at Faith with her broken arm and our pitiful looks, and said she was going to make an exception for us. She took our credit card and processed it for both visas. Turns out  they can accept credit cards. They just don't want to.

We were able to give the kind lady her $30 back. She had already gone through but hadn't left the terminal yet. I was pretty chuffed about this whole thing and I was dead set on getting some darn cash. So the second we got out of customs, I went straight for a cash machine. And my effing card wouldn't work. I tried three times and couldn't get a penny out of that machine.

Once again, we got lucky as heck. The taxi ride from the airport to the hotel was exactly $30. It's a fixed price. A ridiculous price in Zimbabwe, but a fixed price, nevertheless. So we forked over our last $30 US and headed to our hotel cash poor and frustrated.

Oh, I forgot to mention. Our T-Mobile phone had an international plan. And it wasn't working at all in Zimbabwe. I couldn't make calls or get a data connection at all to check our bank account while at the airport or to call the bank.

(Trust me, the smiles are a thin veneer for stewing frustration)

When we got to the hotel, I couldn't get the Wi-Fi to work on my laptop so I couldn't get on to my bank account to see what was going on with my ATM card. The phone was getting Wi-Fi but it kept timing out for the bank. I was guessing the issue at the ATM was anti-fraud. Turns out that was correct. I spent a good 20 minutes on an international call to our bank trying to get this corrected. The bank refused to fix it because I couldn't tell them how much Faith's car payment was. Do you know those stupid anti-fraud questions they ask you? I do auto-pay for most bills. I don't remember what the darn cost of the car payment is! 

Gadzooks! Did I say it was chuffed? Now I’m steamed. In fact, I would go so far as to say I was livid. Security Service Federal Credit Union and I are on our last leg. I can't stand it. BECU was a thousand times better. But I digress. I was able to get to just about any website I wanted except SSFCU. I was guessing there was a bad IP address entry in a routing table somewhere between us and the bank’s web server.

I managed to get the laptop connected to Wi-Fi a few minutes after the call with SSFCU support. Persistence and a spewing black cloud of swear words. Then I remembered my VPN. It can connect to servers in the US and hit the bank from there. I turned on the VPN and forced a connection to Texas. Techno-gobbledygook for a secure and private connection to a US-based computer server that pretends it is me when it talks to the bank. Problem solved. I got to the SSFCU site, added the travel notice and 30 minutes later we had cash from an ATM. Wow was I glad when that day was over.

Day 18:

As promised, the better parts. We booked a full day trip into the Chobe game reserve in Botswana (pronounced like chobee). It was a three-part activity, a morning Safari drive, a midday chill-out for about three hours, and then an afternoon river safari.

The driver picked us up about 5:00 a.m. The Chobe Park was about an hour ride from our hotel in Victoria Falls. The drive was uneventful. When we reached the border, there was a hoof and mouth disease protection requirement. The car drove through some type of liquid and we had to stand in a puddle of liquid to treat our shoes. Then we had to go in for a quick medical activity where they sanitized our hands. Then it was immigration and on into the park where we met our safari driver. His given name was john, but his trade name was Cobra.

Cobra had the oldest and least fancy safari truck of any vehicle we saw the whole day we were out there. Don't judge a book by its cover. Cobra was great. His truck handled every dip and climb of off-road flawlessly. And we had a terrific time. We were joined by Maurice and Jean Francois on the safari. As you might have guessed, they were from France. And those fellows were biking thousands of miles from Cape Town all the way up into Botswana and soon to be heading back. They would also join us later on the river safari.

Chobe had more strict requirements for the drivers then Timbavati did. Cobra was supposed to stay on the roads, tar and dirt. He was not supposed to go off into the bush. And I'm not telling you that he did. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that we got right up close to the lions just like we did in Timbavati. I'm not telling you that when we went looking for the leopard, that we did a brief off-road excursion there either. I'm not telling you any of that. I'm just generally chatting about what a nice day it was.

As you might gather, we went looking for a leopard. We saw all kinds of game on the drive--elephants, striped weasels, impalas of course, kudu (including an elderly fellow who looked like he was on his last legs), buffalo, hippos, giraffes, marabou storks (a member of the ugly five animals, look it up), vultures, and as alluded above we saw lions as well.

Chobe was much more arid and desert like then Kruger or Timbavati. And as I understand it, they have more elephants than in any other park in the world. At least that's what we heard from cobra. We were able to find the leopard's kill up in a tree. It was an impala. We weren't able to find the leopard. It was likely in a tree somewhere nearby sleeping and waiting for the cover of dark to eat a bit more of the impala.

We had a tasty lunch and nearly 3 hours to kill at the Cresta Mowana-Safari Resort and Spa. It's a beautiful place right on the Chobe River. We didn't see any game out in the river. We did however see an impala right in the middle of the resort's courtyard. It was grazing around this massive baobab tree. I spent time filtering through photos for our blog, and Faith spent time reading.

Later that afternoon, we got on a boat with about eight other folks including Maurice and Jean Francois and headed down the river. Maybe up the river. I have no idea. But I do know is we saw several crocodiles, a bunch of hippos including one that attempted to attack the boat--that was kind of intense--buffalo, domestic cattle, zebras, elephants, tons of birds, and more hippos and crocodiles. It was a fun and very informative boat safari.

We headed back across the border using up the second of our two entry visas for Zimbabwe that I talked about above. We changed drivers at the border. It was about 7:30 or 8:00 when we got the second driver. That was Enock. Most of that drive is not in the game part. Nevertheless, right in the tar road on the way back we saw elephants, buffalo, a whole pack of hyenas and a whole pack of wild dogs hunting, all outside of the game park.

I tried to take some pictures of the hyenas, but our new camera does not do well at night when it's being handheld. It requires a tripod. I did get some super shaky videos of the wild dogs. If you can tolerate the shaking, they're worth watching. Enock asked for a copy because seeing the pack of wild dogs was, as noted in Timbavati, quite a rare treat. After nearly 16 hours, we got back to our hotel and crashed. It was a good day.

(The below is an experiment in adding a video to the blog versus adding a link. Please let us know if this causes the page to load too slowly.)

Day 19:

Saturday, we got going later after the long day on Friday. We started the day by going to The Big Tree around 9 AM on our way to park at the Victoria Falls. The Big Tree is a 1200-year-old baobab and it is a mammoth. The tree has survived scores of drought years in Zimbabwe and still managed to grow to over 70 feet (20 meters) in diameter. The bark of the tree is grey and resembles the skin of an elephant.

The highlight of the day was our visit to the Victoria Falls Rainforest Park which is the main viewing area for the Zimbabwe side of the falls. The portion of the park nearest to the falls truly is a rainforest. The falls generate so much continuous spray that the otherwise arid land around the falls is turned into a lush, green forest. The falls are named after Queen Victoria. David Livingstone was the first westerner to see the falls back in the mid-1800s. He was a Scotsman and named them after the queen. The locals call it Mosi-oa-Tunya meaning ‘the smoke that thunders,’ referring to the cloud of spray that continuously billows off and around the falls.

The prime viewing time for the falls is in March. Winter (USA summertime) is the dry season. This area of Africa starts getting rain in the November timeframe, shortly before the start of summer. I mentioned in our Timbavati/Kings Camp blog that the summer rains were late and the park was dry and arid. That was the same case with the area all around Victoria Falls.

The falls were still spectacular at about half of their full potential length. The Zambia side of the falls is a little bit higher than the Zimbabwe side. Until the summer rains properly swell the source rivers, the Zambia side is just a trickle. The crazy, awe-inspiring view gets crazier and…awe-inspiring-er??? LOL. Yes, it gets even more awe inspiring.

Our trip was timed specifically to avoid the wet season so we would hopefully have good visibility in South Africa for the safaris. It was a gamble because the rains can start as early as mid-October. We hadn’t originally planned to go to Victoria Falls. I knew it was near by to Kruger but I didn’t think it would be practical. Patrick from South Africa Luxury Tours (the company we used for our Kings Camp booking) included Victoria Falls in his original proposed itinerary. I was so jazzed about the possibility of seeing the falls that we went for it.

No regrets. Even at half its full grandeur it is so incredibly beautiful and inspirational. It rained off-and-on when we were first at the falls. In addition to the mist from the falls, the rainforest lived up to its title. Faith and I took pictures of each other from about 75 feet apart. She was standing in the rain, and I was standing in the sunshine. It really felt like what I would expect of a rainforest.

We headed back to the hotel and hung out for a few hours. That evening, we had booked a dinner cruise on the Zambezi River about the falls. The tour company picked us up from our hotel at 4:30 and dropped us back around 8:30. We had a four-course gourmet dinner while watching hippos, elephants, crocodiles and waterfowl of every kind. It was cloudy on the western horizon when we boarded. It seemed we would not get much of a sunset show. However, the river faeries did their magic. As the cruise progressed, the clouds thinned giving us vivid oranges and reds as the western horizon burned with the last rays of the African sun.

The fellows sitting next to us on the cruise were brothers from Australia, Ian and John. We talked about our up-coming trip to Australia and had a great time chatting. They had met a couple of fellows on the lower deck who were from the northeastern part of Australia. We got to talk with James and Sab who gave us loads of tips for our planned drive from Port Douglas to Sydney. The cruise was beautiful. The food was delicious. The company was great.  

Day 20:

Our flight back to Johannesburg left from Livingstone, Zambia as noted above regarding my mix-up for the flights. The way back was without incident and quite pleasant. We booked a car with the hotel and asked that the driver take us on a brief tour of Livingstone. Our checkout time was 10 and our flight didn’t leave until 1:30. We left the hotel and spent about two hours in Livingstone before heading to the hotel. Most of that time we spent in the museum where we learned of the origin for the phrase, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”  

David Livingstone was a Scottish missionary, abolitionist and explorer who made several trips to Africa in an effort to find the source of the Nile River, as well as missionary and abolition work. As noted, he was the first westerner to see Victoria Falls. He disappeared for several years in the heart of Africa. A newspaper in New York sent journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley to find Livingstone. He had only a description of Livingstone, no pictures. Hence, when he found him two years later, he met him with the question, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

(The Livingstone Papers)

See all these fun facts we learn when we jaunt around from here to there. We will pick up more of Day 20 in Johannesburg. We had a few hours in the evening there to do something very important. NO! I’m not telling you right now. You’ll have to wait for our next exciting episode of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show coming to you from Johannesburg, South Africa.

- See you all soon -