Day 1…Victoria Falls River Lodge
From the Londolozi Game Reserve, we flew back to the Kruger Mpumalanga Airport (KMI airport). From here we were due to be flown to the International airport near Victoria Falls and collected from there to be taken to the Victoria Falls River Lodge. Unfortunately, this flight was cancelled and our back-up flight took us to a completely different country, Zambia and its airport in Livingstone Zambia. This change to our planned collection from the airport in Zimbabwe meant that we were now collected from the Zambian airport and driven to the main bridge over the river that is the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. We were in the town of Livingstone and our driver’s job was to get us to the bridge and hand us over to our Zimbabwean driver. The problem with this process was getting us through the customs post situated in the middle of the bridge over the river and it was only the experience and personality of our Zambian Driver that got us through customs and delivered us safely to our next driver whose job was to then take us to our destination and home for the next three days, the Victoria Falls River Lodge.
It didn’t take us long to make our way down Livingstone’s main street and onto the bridge across the Zambezi River. I was trying to take some photos of the buildings that we passed on this Livingstone street; the curious photo below of what was probably the fence of some town zoo was the only one worth keeping.
To the left is a photo of the main building that marks the entry point into the Zambezi National Park. We drove through the Park’s gate and were taken a short distance to the edge of the Zambezi River where two workers from our lodge waited for us to drive us directly down the river by boat to our lodge’s jetty.
Our destination was a private game lodge built in the Zambezi National Park. Our accommodation consisted of tented ‘lodges’ with thatched roofs built on raised decks that over-looked the river. Both inside and out, these rooms were both very attractive and comfortable. Below left is a view of our verandah with a plunge pool to cool down at the end of our busy days. Our firsts guests that came to visit us not long after our arrival weren’t the most attractive of creatures but they were the first Zimbabwean warthogs we had ever met.
We were made very welcome by the human hosts at the lodge and a late lunch was provided with views out over the river. We had time to rest for the afternoon, getting us ready for our sunset River cruise later in the day.
The river cruise boat on the right above was not the vehicle which collected us and took us out for a cruise along the Zambezi River. It was merely one of the tourist boats exploring the Zambezi River upstream from Victoria Falls. Ours was a much smaller craft that took three couples for our cruise on the river.
As was to be expected, our cruise highlighted the fact that we were in fact in a wild river in Africa where the ‘wild-life’ was to be kept at a good distance. It was the large number of hippopotami that we encountered that was the first warning that reminded us that this was not a river for a quick swim. If that wasn’t enough, the large crocodile on the bank was another warning to keep all parts of our body inside the boat.
Perhaps the least dangerous creatures we were introduced to were the bee-eaters that nested in holes in the banks of the river that they had dug in the clay to give them quick exits out over the river when hunting for their food.
The elephants that used the banks of the Zambezi River didn’t appear too dangerous either but none of us were tempted to get too close. We had a lovely couple of hours exploring the river and watching the sunset over the water before we turned back to the safety of our lodge and the dinner that awaited us.
FOGTRAVEL 