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Saturday, 04 February 2012
Saturday, 04 February 2012
After filling in border documents, to save some time at the border post, we left the hotel at 08h00 this morning for a day trip to Victoria Falls. To avoid paying the high road fees and insurance for our vehicle for a single day excursion into Zimbabwe, we decided to use the hotel shuttle service. After a 20 minute drive, we arrived at the Kazungula border post. After completing formalities, we were driven to the Zimbabwe side where we were met by another tour operator who works in conjunction with our hotel. We settled down for the one hour’s drive to Victoria Falls.
The Kazungula border crossing was a breeze with no queues or hiccups. We saw elephant and southern ground-hornbills during the trip to Victoria Falls.
After a short tour of Victoria Falls town, the driver dropped us off at the Victoria Falls entrance. The town was a hive of tourist activity and appeared to be thriving. The water was flowing strongly over the falls creating mist clouds that rained down on us as we walked from one lookout point to another. The falls are 107m high and 1,737 km wide (i.e. bigger than Niagara Falls). Luckily Philip had brought along the rain ponchos.
After touring the Victoria Falls, which took around one and a half hours, and taking a million photo’s, we browsed through the local curio market and then walked the two kilometres to the Victoria Falls hotel which was built in 1904. It is a magnificent, colonial style building with lots of history and overlooks the railway bridge between Zimbabwe and Zambia with mist spraying upwards from the falls. We sat on the veranda and enjoyed a delicious lunch while soaking up the magnificent view. It was very hot and humid and during lunch, we had a brief thunderstorm that cooled things down.
Once again, we filled out the border documentation and waited for the tour operator to arrive to drive us back to Kazangula border post. He arrived promptly at 15h00 and we left immediately. On the way, we saw huge herds of impala and several large troops of baboons on the road. All in all, a fantastic day out.
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