debbieann

I'm going to try and post about our trip, starting at the beginning, rather
than reversing the order.

The first part of the trip was to Vic Falls, mostly because Charles really
wanted to go. We used a safari co to do all the bookings, so they arranged
airport pickup, sunset cruise, helicopter ride, birding drive, and trip back
to the airport. Expensive, but it saved time and angst. Flight from jnb to
vic falls is easy, less than 2 hours. We stayed at Lorrie's B&B, which was
cheap - US$50/night - every price is quoted in US$. One thing that is
complicated is deciding ahead of time if you want double visa entry or
single. We were staying in Zimbabwe (everyone just says Zim), but we wanted
to go to Zambia as well, so we got double entry, US$45/each, available at
arrival.

We arrived and, I'm not sure exactly how to say this, but the owner is an
older white woman, with a couple of older white guys helping her out, and
they come across as racist pretty early on, there is a certain age/living
place that seems to breed a certain attitude, there was a bar that was the
central socializing area, the socializing was about golf and drinking. There
were a couple of dogs, which I really enjoyed, and a cat. It wasn't as
locked up as SAfrica, which was nice. We rested from getting there. No AC,
but there was a fan, and mosquito netting. We took anti malarials for this
trip. We got picked up for the sunset cruise at 4 pm.

When we got to the Zambezi river, I thought we were sitting down for a drink
before getting on the boat, but then the sort of deck we were on turned into
the boat. Alcohol was free and unlimited! I drank soda water. There were a
couple of SAfrican tourists, some german tourists, and a local mom w her 2
kids on our boat. I was not expecting much, but it GREAT - we saw elephants
swimming across the whole river, which was pretty wide. I had no idea
elephants could swim so well. There were two of them. We also saw heaps of
birds, and the capt knew all the birds, which was great. We saw hippos and a
crocodile and a water monitor lizard. We saw an elephand with a massive
erect penis that hung down to the ground. I think the elephants would've had sex, but
there were toomany boats around, there were maybe 15-20 sunset cruise boats
on the river. It was about 2 hrs and was really enjoyable.

Our B&B was 3 km from town, so we had the cruise people drop us off in town
(the town is Victoria Falls, it is very small) and we had dinner at Mama
Africa, which was probably my favorite dinner there. we had meat in ground
nut sauce, sort of spicy pb, I loved it. We had eaten at a Mama Africa in
Uganda, but this menu was different - the local cuisine I guess. then we
tried walking around afterwards, but the local tourist police really
discourages that, we had people asking where we were going. we went about 50
ft to Lola's for internet, then a guy in a taxi arrived to drop something
off, and we asked if we could get a ride, and he said yes, it was about $5
back to the B&B. some of the US currency I saw in Zim was the most worn out
dirtiest dollars I have ever seen, they would not circulate in the US.