Monday, December 16th – Tuesday, December 17th 2024
World Tour Days 44 – 45
Crossing the border into Zimbabwe was relatively easy, it expensive. I don’t know what Canada and China did to Zimbabwe but those visas to enter are over double the cost as the other countries. Nick’s cost 30 USD and mine was 75 USD for one time entry. The unfortunate part is that we were only in Zimbabwe for 24 hours.
After paying all of our cash to the immigration officer we went to our hotel, where we got to stay in tents much like the ones we use from our overland truck. The hotel’s tents were also canvas but had a few more windows, were a little bigger, and had twin beds inside. The hotel had a nice pool and was only a 15 minute walk to Victoria Falls.
We spent the first afternoon upon arrival walking through the town of Victoria Falls with a few friends from the truck: Rhino, Chloe, and Alex. There are a lot of Australians on the overland truck so my Aussie accent is improving, even if by small increments. It helps when the bar is low to begin with.
We met the overland group members who were not off doing an organized activity for lunch at a cafe overlooking the gorge and bridge. The milkshakes were excellent; Nick stuck to his classic vanilla and I got white chocolate pistachio. Dinner was with the same group at a restaurant down the road from our hotel which was upscale pub food. That was also delicious.
The last morning in Zimbabwe we walked to Victoria Falls at opening time, which is 6:00am. Apparently rainbows are visible over the falls at sunrise/early morning, between 2:00-4:00pm, and a lunar rainbow during the night when there’s a full moon during rainy season. Unfortunately we were there when it wasn’t guaranteed to see the lunar rainbow so we opted for an early morning visit instead.
There is a trail along the falls that has several lookout points along the way. At opening there were only about 3 other people there, but by about 6:45am the masses started to appear. Luckily we took the main path to get to the waterfalls and then took an alternate route to get back to the exit, so we avoided the crowds. We saw the same type of rainbow from the Zimbabwe side as we did from the Zambia side when we did the Devils Pool.
We left Zimbabwe at 11:30 am on a new truck named Cliff (our old one, Peter Tosh, had to go on another tour). Our destination was a new country: Botswana.