20th – 22nd
March 2011
Victoria Falls, Zambia.
Crossing into Zambia is always fun…there are taxes for the vehicle,
$50US each for visa, car insurance, carbon tax and a local Council levy – total
cost for 2 people in the car was $222US.
Luckily we then enjoyed 10 days in the country! Then there are the money changers very eager
to do business. We particularly liked
the “insurance” caravan – it’s so dilapidated and nothing’s been done about it
since we last saw it in 2006!
Vic Falls are fantastic at the moment….the Zambesi River is in
full flood so the waters were roaring over the top and through the gorge – the
water’s so high they’ve had to shorten the bungee jump on the bridge so you
don’t land in the drink!! We stayed on
the Zambian side of the bridge and stopped halfway across which is the Zimbabwe
border where you can watch the brave but crazy bungee jumpers. Then we scrambled past some menacing baboons
(they go after fruit which we don’t carry) down to “boiling point” where the
waters were swirling hence the name. Then back up to the eastern cataract –
this part was exhilarating as we walked to the look out at the top of the falls
in our NZ ponchos!!! Imagine the spray
bucketing like a Darwin downpour but there’s actually no rain, then wading
across the pedestrian bridge when 20cm water is gushing over it and no
visibility – it was such a drenching we kept going back for more J
Staying at a lodge in a safari style tent near Livingstone on
the Zambian side we met a very adventurous guy called Robert Knol who is
cycling 11,000km from Cairo to Cape Town to raise money for bore water for a
Zambian school. It’s a school he went to as a boy when his parents taught
there. Robert now lives in the
Netherlands and his project is called www.11000km.NL He’s out to break the
Guiness Book of Records in doing it in 74 not 81 days and was already 6 days
ahead. He was about to face the
elephants near Chobe in Botswana but his blog reports he’s got through
that. The worst had been the kids in
Ethiopia trying to throw stones at him to knock him off the bike to steal his
stuff….
