It looks simple on the map. Google Map it if you like. You just zip from Livingstone in Zambia to Muchenje in Botswana. Right? Doesn’t look far.
But this is Africa! So we leave the Zambezi Sun resort (could have stayed there for a month) with a driver called Collins. He takes us to the river crossing by ferry, across the Zambezi river, to Botswana. We do the passport thing, then he sends us off on the ferry (takes about 3 minutes to cross), where we then meet Stanford, who takes us to the customs office. More passport business here. There’s a queue about 50 people long out the door, but we go to the foreigners window and miraculously get many stamps in our passports in very few minutes. There are some countries where the whole stamp thing has been left behind with the advent of new technology, like Australia where you don’t actually get a stamp in your passport. Then there’s the “stampers” . These include: India, Zambia, Mexico, Botswana – in fact anywhere that wields a bit of power at the border, and might just not be called a first world country. Thump, thump goes the stamp.
But I digress.
Stanford takes us about an hour’s drive to Kasane Airport for the “handover” . One could easily feel like a kidnappee! Here we are met by Nick, who works at the lodge we will be staying at here in Chobe National Park. Nick drives us the final 50 minutes or so and we arrive at the beautiful Muchenje Lodge, just outside the national park. We are greeted by our delightful hosts, Joy and Robert, and could not feel more at home in this spectacular place. We are perched on a rise above the Chobe River, with views across to Namibia on the other side of the river, and housed in two person bungalows. The lodge takes a maximum of just 22 guests. So good bye crowds.
After a huge lunch (I’m currently looking at dieting for a year after this trip) we head out for an afternoon safari drive. See photo below of Ferg taking the front seat.
Our truck is just for us, and two others head out too. The tracks are sandy and bumpy but before long we come across herds of impala, we see giraffes just cruising through the bush, there are vultures, warthogs, eagles, and my all time favourite – elephants. Photos below…..I have more elephant photos than you can imagine. We saw a family group having a mud bath and blowing dust all over them selves. It was quite amazing. I never really imagined it would be this good. The guides are just great. There is nothing they don’t know about the animals and the area. They have eagle eyes, and will stop the truck and turn off the engine to show us tiny birds perched among the trees that they spied, or a rare antelope camouflaged in the bush.
The whole area is so dry, it looks dead. The elephants have ravaged everything edible and it’s hard to imagine anything can survive. The boab trees are spectacular. Just huge, and leafless.
We stop about 5pm for sundowner drinks (photo below) where we get to know a family from Sydney in one of the other trucks. They have two boys about the same age as ours, so all of a sudden it is kid city. They get along like a house on fire, and after a couple of wines for the parents, we head back to the lodge with the kids in one truck and the “grown ups” in the other.
Some of the guests head out after dinner for a night safari, but we call it a day as we have a full day safari tomorrow.

The sun set with a glass of wine in hand. Baboons scared the birds into flight as I took the photo.

One of many beautiful boab trees.

Ferg up front in the truck, helping spot for wildlife.

An ugly warthog.

Elephants at the mud bath.

The vultures lie in wait.

What a fantastic day it’s been! John started with his usual run around the area, I visited the falls again and the boys relaxed. The resort is adjacent to the posh Royal Livingstone Hotel, but they share the same grounds. There are giraffes, zebras and impalas wandering around within the grounds, as well as the ubiquitous monkeys. It was quite surreal to see zebras nibbling on the grass by the pool!
After waffles for breakfast, we were taken to the helipad for the biggest buzz so far.
In a six seater helicopter, we had a 30 minute flight starting below the falls, dropping down into the gorge and banking round the bends. Then upstream to circle the falls. OMG! It was better than Discovery Channel! It gave perspective to the way the falls drop into a crack and then squeeze through a gap in the next zig zag of the river.

Here’s Ferg up front…..

And this is the amazing sight of the falls from the chopper:

It really takes your breath away.
We went further upstream to Long Island and happened to see some elephants there:

And we haven’t even gone on safari yet!
I have dozens more photos, and love them all. The boys faces were lit up the entire time we spent in the air, and Harry never stopped talking on the headset about what he could see. I think their adjective was “awesome” but I’m sure it meant more than the average awesome.
Time for a dip in the pool before wandering over to the Royal Livingstone to take a speed boat to Livingstone Island. This is where Dr. David Livingstone first saw Victoria Falls in 1855. He got there in a dugout canoe. I was happy with 80 horsepower to beat the current.
It’s the big island you can see towards the left of the edge of the falls in the photo above. Once there, you go barefoot (very muddy) to the absolute edge of the falls. No joke. No guard rails. Just a few billion litres of water streaming past you. I’m running out of superlatives, but it was great.

Here’s John near the edge. He got way closer than that. So did the boys.
We had a gorgeous lunch under a tent top to keep the spray off, just metres from the edge of the falls. Rainbows abound here.

We met some lovely people there, some Aussies, some Poms and Americans. We all traded stories of our travels so far. We headed back, impressed by the experience and what Livingstone had done all those years ago.
Next up, while wandering back to our hotel, we came across some giraffes including a 3 month old.

And then came the really random activity of the day! Here in Zambia, you can go for a ride on a Segway! I’ve never heard of these before, but they sure are fun.

We cruised around on these for an hour, and – you guessed it – Ferg and Harry want one. Each.
While the boys jammed in their third swim for the day, I nipped over to the falls for my third visit. Call me obsessed. I don’t care.

And here’s one last shot. One of the zebras hanging around the hotel.

For the second time in 10 days, we arose at an obscene hour. We left delightful Port Elizabeth on a 6am flight to Jo’burg, and another flight to Livingstone in Zambia, arriving mid afternoon at our hotel. We’re staying at the Zambezi Sun, which is the only hotel where you can walk to and from the falls. The township of Livingstone is 10km away. This is the Africa I remember from travelling in Egypt and Morocco – dusty and dirty, run down, everything needs a paint job, much idleness, no gutters, a “bargain” on every corner, at least half a dozen locals jammed in the back of a ute, pot holes in the roads that may never be fixed, and lots of happy faces.
I have dreamed for years of seeing Victoria Falls. It’s definitely one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. No matter which source offers a list, they’ll never leave out this one. We chilled by the pool while Ferg and Harry chilled in the pool. It’s a huge pool, and if we were here for a week, they wouldn’t get bored. We made a plan for tomorrow. This isn’t just seeing a water fall. They have every activity option available here from fishing to bungy jumping. Then we grabbed the raincoats and wandered over to a Natural Wonder if you don’t mind! Can’t believe I’ve finally made it.
You just pop out of the trees and there it is:

It’s noisy and it’s wet. The spray flies up with the force of the updraft from the water crashing down constantly. It’s really amazing. It’s 1.7km wide of continuous water fall. You can view it from just at the edge before the water tumbles down, and then walk around to the eastern cataract (in your raincoat) are see it face on through the spray.

There’s an entry fee you have to pay to visit the falls, but they don’t put it towards new signs! I guess that’s part of the colonial charm about the place.

And then the sun set over the Zambezi! Sounds like a cheesy movie hey?

Surfers know how it is. There are some places you want to go. Like Pipeline in Hawaii, G-land in Indo. And Jeffries Bay, or JBay as it is known, is one of them. We woke up to a perfect winter’s day, barely a breeze to be had, not a cloud in sight, and about 20 degrees. We had breakfast looking out over the Indian Ocean and watched a group of whales cruising by.
Supertubes is the famous break here, and we are staying about 200m from it. So John organised a hire board (being the only surfing accessory he couldn’t fit in his bag), and disappeared for some fun. He reports that it was poor to medium, but easy to see how good it could get.
Ferg and Harry had a great morning on the beach in the sun.
A quiet afternoon, where John squeezed in another solo surf, then took the boys out for a quick dip. Here’s a pic I took of the boys at the water’s edge, while John gets a last wave and the moon rises. Sweet.

And that’s a squid boat on the horizon – the first of many each night. We used to see them from our house back home when we first moved there in the mid 90s, not for some years now.

The Fourth of July brought a change to the weather. A howling southwesterly and buckets of rain with it. Although the wind was favorable for another surf, the swell was in a coma. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about surfing, it’s that you need a big weather window to guarantee a good time. So our brief two days didn’t really deliver. Maybe come back another day? Might be best to leave town as they are setting up for the Billabong Pro comp which starts in a few days. The circus is in town.

We headed south for a look at St. Francis Bay where is was getting windier and the downpour continued. This is the most amazing town. There are two sections and in one part, every single house, without exception, is white with either a slate or a thatched roof. It’s an unwritten law.

The other part of town is all beige. Clearly they don’t make the most of their non-white opportunity. Very beige.

Here’s a random photo of the stadium they built for the Soccer World Cup in Cape Town.

Leaving South Africa tomorrow for the Zambian side of Victoria Falls.

It’s sad to think I’m actually disappointed that we had no Internet last night. How times change. I remember travelling through Europe, Canada and the US in the early 80s when we used a Poste Restante to collect snail mail every month or two. A long distance phone call was a big deal, and we used film cameras and waited till we had enough money to develop the pics. Now, we travel with a power board to charge the iPhones, the iPad, my two digital cameras (one SLR and one snappy job), the boys’ cameras, John’s GPS/watch, …..I think that’s all. Our photos are reviewed instantly, and (Internet reception pending) we are in contact with the whole world all the time.

Today we moved along the coast to Knysna, another enormous town/city. I’m starting wonder if South Africa has anything like Wye River on the books, with a pub, a shop and a camping ground. John offered me the opportunity to have a “La de da Latte” at a swish little cafe at the heads to the inlet on which Knynsa sits. It really was a good brew, and indeed we were surrounded by the beautiful people that own the insanely expensive real estate splashed all over the hill sides. As John says, “no holiday shacks here”, only mansions.

On to the Elephant Sanctuary – a place that looks after elephants that have been injured and orphaned due to poaching. We got to touch and walk with the elephants, – they have very snotty noses – but declined to ride them. I really don’t think they were meant for that.

Right next door was a huge bird sanctuary. We saw some beautiful birds, including toucans, macaws and heaps that we don’t know the names of! Just look forward to a Slide night at our house and you’ll get to see them all!
From there it was a couple of hours drive to Jeffries Bay where we will be for a two nights. John has a board lined up and the sharks are circling awaiting his entry into the famed breaks here.

Here’s Harry and me up close and personal with one of the elephants.

The charging fiasco.

One of the Toucans. They are much smaller than I thought they would be.

Ferg walking with a snotty nosed elephant. It was cool.