Johannesburg to Victoria Falls and back

September 9th 2013, 12:02:00 am

I changed my flight to South Africa to be a day sooner in order to get to Johannesburg in time on Monday morning to go on a week long tour up to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and back. Booking in on this tour was a bit of a spur of the moment thing, I'd only found out about it's existence the Wednesday beforehand; I checked if I could change my flights and if there was room on the bus, then got flights moved and got myself booked in.

I was picked up from the "hostel" I was staying in (It was really just a guys house that he let people stay in... you cant call it a hostel and only have one bathroom & toilet) at 5am. I had been told the day before where the keys were to open the front door, the front verandah cage and the massive padlock on the front gate, topped with an electric fence, and had been told to go out and unlock all the locks, then come inside and wait looking out the window for the bus to show up. At the time I'd though it must have been a terrible neighbourhood to merit all that security, but having spent more time in South Africa I've found that pretty much everywhere has crazy levels of security like that so I'm not so sure anymore.

The bus arrived on time and I was the first person to be picked up. Our guide David, an friendly guy with a goofy laugh and a missing front tooth, introduced himself and we headed off to pick up more people, two Australian sisters from Sydney, then two English guys, then two Swiss sisters and two American cousins. Quite a few pairs of relatives!

We drove for a while before stopping for breakfast at a large service station, where we met up with another mini-bus full of people also on the tour. I picked up some suspect biltong to snack on during the trip here, which may have been a huge mistake.

We drove another few hours before stopping for lunch, still in South Africa just before the Botswanan border. Just after lunch, while talking with some of the people from the other bus, I suddenly felt a bit dizzy and had to sit down. As the day went on I started to feel really bloated and got some really nasty stomach cramps; it felt like the symptoms of diarrhea except every time I went to the toilet I couldn't do any more than a fart.

The day dragged on and I felt worse and worse until we finally arrived at the camp ground at Elephant Sands at nearly 22:00... 17 hours on the road. I couldnt eat more than a bread roll at dinner and wasn't in the mood to fuck around putting up tents in the dark, so I "upgraded" to stay in a room that night. It cost way to much for a very basic room with no glass in the windows, only fly screens; but I would have paid any amount at the time because I was feeling so awful.

In the morning the room's attached toilet became a wonderful investment as yesterdays bloated constipation turned into a number 7 on the bristol stool scale. The bloating and some of the cramps went away which was a welcome relief. I went to grab my bags and head over to the other people from the tour having breakfast when I suddenly needed to dash back to the toilet. Eventually I made it over to the bus, but had to make yet another trip to the bathroom before we left.

People say nothing compares to the thrill of bungee jumping, sky-diving and a host of other adrenaline based sports, but I don't think any of them could really compare to the thrill of having full blown diarrhea on a long road trip. The edge of your seat excitement, wondering if you'll make it to the next rest stop before your belly decides it's held things in long enough... It's a thrill that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Thankfully I made it through the 8-9 hours of driving without any accidents with pure good luck, I swallowed a shit load of Imodium but it did nothing to the consistency of the filth spraying out of my behind at each rest stop we stopped at.

We set up our tents in the Victoria Falls Rest Camp and then headed to the actual falls themselves for a self-guided tour. When we arrived there was a stall trying to convince us to rent rain coats but none of us did. The sound of the falls is amazing, hearing tonnes of water per second smashing down onto rocks a hundred metres below makes a thunderous roar like you can only imagine.

For the most part, we were fairly dry with only a bit of spray from the falls in places, but then towards the far end of the walking path the amount of water in the air shot up dramatically, cutting what we could see to very little and completely soaking us in the process. It's a good thing that winter days in zimbabwe are actually pretty warm and pleasant!

We watched someone bungee jump off the bridge over the falls, the same bridge where a bungee cord snapped a little while back while an Australian lady was jumping. She survived and now the bungee jump is run by a South African company and supposedly a whole lot safer now. I had been pretty keen on doing a bridge swing, but with my stomach how it was I decided that was completely off the table now.

We went back to camp, with a stop in at the activities company to book in activities for the days we were there, and waited while dinner was being cooked... and waited... and waited. Apparently somebody had come and bought all the firewood, so the guides had had to buy some green wood and it wasn't burning well so dinner wasn't ready until after 10pm that night. Still feeling pretty awful, I went to bed before dinner was ready and only managed to eat because I got up to go the bathroom and saw it was ready.

The next day I went and found a chemist, armed with my little book of how to deal with various travel illnesses, and got myself some antibiotics to kill whatever was in my gut. I took a double dose as recommended by the booklet and within just a few hours stared to feel a whole lot better. The cramps disappeared entirely and my belly stopped feeling constantly bloated. Lucky for me too, as I'd booked in for a helicopter flight that morning!

It was the first time I'd ever been in a helicopter and I'd opted for the longer flight option that circled around over the Zambezi river as well as the falls. This turned out to be a good idea because it meant that there was only me and another girl from the tour, plus the pilot, in the helicopter, which mean that he only had to worry about putting on a good show for the one side of the helicopter. When we saw hippos, giraffes, and other wild animals, the pilot would circle around so we got a good view.

The view of the falls from the air was spectacular. It was incredible to see all the previous sites of the falls, a deep canyon that zig-zagged across the land, all now covered in thick vegetation with the river flowing deep below.

When we got back I noticed the next helicopter ride, one of the shorter flights, was packed to capacity... It looked like quite a squeeze with some very large gentlemen climbing on board.

All over Victoria Falls town, there are guys trying to sell you the old Zimbabwe money, a product of the hyper-inflation that led to money that was worth more as kindling than it was as money. I got myself a 50 billion dollar note and was pretty chuffed, until I found that hyper-inflation had gone way past 50 billion and the largest bill was 100 trillion. I did manage to secure myself a 100 trillion dollar bill, and also a 1 dollar bill, both with an issue date only 1 year apart!

That afternoon I was booked in to go and ride an elephant, visit rhinos and go on a night game drive followed by a delicious African dinner, with the company of my Australian friends Phoebe and Victoria. On the elephant ride we saw a lot of impalas right at the start, but then disappointingly little aside from birds after that.

The rhinos were amazing, there would have probably been 10 or so gathered around the food thingy in their sanctuary (they're free to roam, but appear to be pretty reliant on the people looking after them and feeding them) and the cutest little baby rhino with them. The funny little squeaky sounds they make are not the sounds you'd expect from something as large as a rhino, and their little faces really look just like dinosaurs. We got to see a few confrontations between them too when one rhino would try and push its way into the food trough, and they would face each other off and charge towards one another.

The "night" game drive was spectacular until the sun went down. We had some spectacular scenes of elephants and giraffes with the African sun setting behind them in the first part of it, but after the sun went down it got cold very quickly, and we found practically no more animals once it was dark, even with the bright red spotlight the driver was scanning around with.

Dinner was a buffet with some really night African style curry and vegetables, just the sort of nutrition I was in need of after several days where I could hardly eat. I was really glad that Phoebe and Victoria were there for dinner, or it would be just been me and a family eating together. The drive back from dinner was done in one of the open safari trucks and oh boy was it cold. The cold air blowing against my head felt like it was giving me an ice cream headache.

The next day I crossed over into Zambia with the two English guys from the tour, Bernard and Steven. We walked to the border, and crossed over by foot (sadly no special stamp for walking border crossings), then got a taxi on the other side to Livingstone town, about 10km away. We didn't really have much of an idea what we wanted to do in Zambia so we had the taxi driver take us on a bit of a tour around the town, pointing out old buildings, hot night clubs and bustling markets.

He stopped at a strip of tourist markets, where the shopkeep at every store wanted to stop you, shake you hand and say hello, and friendly-force you into there stalls for a look, "Looking is free!". After the 10th time I had had enough and sat down with the old ladies actually crafting things. The whole routine feels hospitable on the surface, but is thickly layered in desperation and annoyance and makes me not want to even look if I'm forced to look at everything. Even back home I avoid shops, I prefer to buy shit online and not have to deal with clueless sales staff, so being made to look inside a hundred stalls selling the African equivalent of tiny stuffed koalas and kangaroos is pretty much my version of hell.

That said, I did look in one shop that had some very unique paintings and I even bought one. They had cutesy African animals juxtaposed with unlikely tools and equipment. For example two giraffes sharing iPod headphones, a lion doing weights holding a barbell over its head, a parachuting hippopotamus and a leopard being shot out of a cannon; just like you see in the wild. I wish I'd taken photos, but I've just realised I didn't even photograph the one I bought so now I have to hope it makes it home in the post safely.

After a stop in for some lunch we got a taxi back to the border, and Steven and Bernard crossed over as they were going swimming with crocodiles that afternoon. I stayed in Zambia and went to view the falls from that side. The view from Zambia was completely amazeballs. It just seemed like you could see more and get closer, without the mist in the air becoming opaque and blocking the view. Not that there wasn't a lot of water in the air, the Zambian side made the other side look positively dry. I started to worry that even with my camera in a white water rafting/diving dry bag it was going to get wet.

After getting thoroughly soaked I went for a walk down a different path in the national park that led to some fantastic views of the viewing bridge in front of the falls, and the boiling pot below where the Zambian white water rafting starts from.

I wish I'd had more time to take the walk down there to see the rapids up close but I got distracted by a tribe of baboons who came walking past that I followed and took a lot of photos of. At first I was a bit concerned being up so close, but they really didn't seem to even notice I was there so I followed them for about an hour taking photos. At one stage I used the flash and them a mother baboon started walking directly towards me and I got worried and walked backwards, but she just kept coming after me and many others following. I think they had coincidentally just decided to move further down the path right after my flash went off because they ended up going around me and continuing on down the path.

I crossed back into Zimbabwe and headed back to camp for a shower, only to find that the water was not running for the 3rd day running. It seems that running water and electricity really are luxuries even in the tourist parts of Zimbabwe.

We went as a group that night for dinner at a place called Mama Africa and I ate a traditional Zimbabwe hot pot that was supposedly spicy beef but I couldn't detect even a hint of spice, nor could someone else who ordered it. That's not to say it was bad, but it definitely wasn't the spicy meal the menu described it as.

The next morning we set off back to just across the Botswanan border to Chobe, a nice short drive compared to some of the previous ones. There we went on a game drive around the Chobe game lodge, a huge wildlife park teaming with wildlife. We drove along the river and saw loads of elephants and hippos heading to and from the water for a drink, and even a crocodile or two sunning themselves on the bank. Impalas frolicked, dashing about at a frantic pace leaping over ditches. Sadly the time of day meant we were driving towards the sun for almost the entire drive, and then away from a beautiful sunset; and also that all the cats were off sleeping, but it was still a great display of wildlife.

Botswana had running water and taking a shower after so many days was life changing.

The following day we did another very long drive, broken up by having to stop a few times to sanitize our shoes for foot and mouth disease at a few control points. This consisted of taking out shoes and wetting the soles of them with some sort of liquid that I was told was soda ash. This seems highly ineffective, considering we were also bringing tents with us covered in dirt and dust that did not need sanitizing.

We arrived at the camp ground for the night pretty late in the afternoon and we greeted by a man who looked a lot like an African version of Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. We had another buffet dinner, followed by drinking games, followed by the local entertainment of twp of the staff getting into a fight and one of the guys taking his pants off. I've seen sometimes where guys fight they'll take their shirt off, but stripping down to a shirt and underwear to fight is new to me.

The last day of the tour we had to get up stupidly early to get to the South African border before the churchies arrive and congest things. Apparently a lot of people in Botswana cross over into South Africa on a Sunday for church. The border crossing was trouble free, although we had to go and get something signed off after showing that we had our yellow fever shots because a few of us had been to Zambia, which slowed things down.

We had a nice breakfast at a town in South Africa before doing a group photo and saying out goodbyes, after which the two buses went different routes and the larger group was split. Another few hours of driving and we were back in Johannesburg and dropped off at the various hostels.