Today we met Thembie and our driver to go to Victoria falls with a subset of our group. Some of the group had gone to additional game drives in Chobe but we decided to just do the falls and then relax. Mark and Heather, another couple from our group came with us.We drove to the falls and stopped at a market by the falls that was run by a high school classmate of Thembie. The market owner provided us with ponchos to use at the falls. We later found that those ponchos were also provided to the market owners by G Adventures, the market owners were responsible for providing them to visitors, and on our tour G Adventures also paid the market owner rent for each poncho we used. We took a few more photos of the hotel before we left.
Victoria Fallsknown by locals asMosi-oa-Tunya, “Thundering Smoke/Smoke that Rises”; orShungu Namutitima, “Boiling Water”) is located on the border betweenZambiaandZimbabwe. Itis one of the world’s largest waterfalls, with a width of 1,708m (5,604ft).
Our guide Bernard, was also our van driver for the length of our visit and he showed us around the falls. He liked to say that 80 percent of the falls were in Zambia but 80% of the views were in Zimbabwe. The park that we walked for all of the views was in Zimbabwe, although we could see a bridge that corssed into Zambia from some of the overlooks.
The viewing was divided into 15 overlooks that were numbered. There was a mostly flat well mainained concrete path between the viewpoints that made for easy walking. The first 8 overlooks stayed mostly dry and were great for pictures, the last 7 were very wet because of how the wind was blowing the day that we visited, and we got absolutely drenched. Taking out a camera at the later viewpoints wasn’t viable, so I was glad that we got pictures from the eariler ones. Mark took out his phone and water got into it and he had issues for the rest of the trip.
After we we finished at the falls and visited the market where we got the ponchos to purchase a few souvenirs, we returned to the hotel. We had booked a helicopter ride over the falls to see them from that perspective. We were picked up at the hotel by the helicopter company along with Mark and Heather and were taken to the helicopter landing pad where we took a trip over the falls. It was a very different perspective, It’s impossible to really tell how much water is feeding the falls until you see behind them.
We returned to the hotel and had some dinner and packed because we leave in the morning to fly back to Johannesburg, then immediately on to LHR and then home.