Post Tour: Zimbabwe – Botswana – South Africa

After our final night on tour, Amanda and I elected to stay a further two nights in Victoria Falls. After nursing rather epic hangovers from the night before for most of the day, we first moved to a nicer accommodation before taking on one of the “adventure” activities that you can do in Vic Falls being a Canyon Swing. The swing basically involves jumping off a platform with a rope attached to your waist (via harness of course), dropping into the gorge and then swinging on the rope in a big arc over the river. The drop on this particular gorge swing was 70m into a 140m swing arc. Amanda bravely went first and although she did scream a little, I was very proud of her starfish jump into oblivion. I followed her but instead of jumping off, the guys on the platform helped me into a handstand position so that when I jumped, I fell head first. It was an awesome rush. We had dinner in town that night with our tour group at a Spanish tapas restaurant. We said our final goodbyes to everyone that night.

The next day we awoke early and were picked up from the hotel and taken for a day trip to Chobe National Park in Botswana. Of course, that involved a border crossing out of Zimbabwe and into Botswana. The guide that took us to the border passed us over to his sister company in Botswana where we proceeded down to the Chobe River for a morning game drive by boat in the Chobe National Park. The Chobe is home to over 120,000 elephants and it didn't disappoint. We saw herd upon herd of elephants along the river, as well as plenty of hippos. We also spotted the odd crocodile as we went along, as well as plenty of birdlife. At one point we stopped to watch a single elephant play in a mud hole and shortly after stopping, the elephant proceeded to walk into the water, straight at our boat, so we had to reverse up to get out of the way. The elephant then treated himself to a bath, completely submerging his body in the water. Was great to watch.

For lunch we were dropped at a very flash lodge on the Chobe River while the rest of the boat had lunch elsewhere. After lunch we got into open top/side 4WD vehicles and went for another game drive. We were hoping to spot some big cats but alas they proved difficult to find. Instead we saw lots more elephant, giraffe, warthog and kudu. In some parts of the game drive, we came within mere feet of herd of elephants and had to stop on more than one occasion due to animals being on the road.

After our game drive, we returned to the border and crossed back into Zimbabwe. We had just a small amount of time back at our hotel before we headed back to Victoria Falls for a lunar rainbow tour. During high water season (which is when we were at the falls), and on a clear night with a full moon, it's possible to see a rainbow form in the mist of the falls produced by the moonlight. We had a reasonable night and did manage to see the rainbow, but it was very faint and impossible to photograph. It was still a unique experience to witness none-the-less.

We woke on our final morning at Victoria Falls and packed up ready to check out and fly to Johannesburg. Before we departed though, we had one final experience at Vic Falls to do – a helicopter ride over the falls themselves. We were picked up from our hotel and taken to the helicopter for a 12 minute ride over the falls.. We had a four seater chopper which we went in with a random German couple (we met a few German couples at Vic Falls). Amanda got to sit in the front, which she really loved as it was her first time in a helicopter.

That afternoon we flew to Johannesburg and then took the Gautrain to Sandton, where our hotel was. We walked to the hotel and then checked in up on the 27^th floor as we had upgraded to a club floor, where we had our own lounge that provided complimentary breakfast from 7-11:30, light lunch/high tea from 12:30 – 5pm and then cocktails from 5:30 – 7:30pm. We went out to dinner that night at a steakhouse nearby the hotel. The next day we had a day with nothing planned. We explored the shopping malls nearby the hotel. We also took the chance to freshen up – Amanda and I both had haircuts and then Amanda also got a pedicure and had her makeup done. That night was our final night on holidays we went out to dinner to celebrate a great holiday at a local Italian restaurant – Pigalle. After a couple glasses of champagne and enjoying our entree and a huge seafood platter for mains, I got down on one knee and asked Amanda to marry me. She instantly said yes and we celebrated with more champagne.

The next day we asked for a late checkout and then floated around the mall until it was time to the head to the airport. We did some final shopping after clearing customs and then boarded our plane for home. And so concludes our epic African Adventure of 2013. Thanks to everyone that made it to the end of this blog. Stay tuned for the next adventure!

Cheers

Dave & Amanda