Friday 26th December 2025
With no Safari this morning and no “dreaded” bang on the door at 0500hrs, we could have a steady morning and as our “pick-up” wasn’t ’till 1025, a leisurely breakfast with the family; Alschke, Ash, Jon and Ruth (my apologies if I’ve miss-spelt either name) and we really had a good laugh and discussed numerous topics over our full English breakfast, including baked beans!!!
Time to leave😡, so said our good byes and jumped into our transport to
Zimbabwe along with our two American companions. The border was only about 10-minutes away, the Botswana side was quite a modern building with efficient officers who stamped us out. Back into our bus and we headed to the Zimbabwe side, all of 20-meters but a selection of corrugated iron clad buildings, and the first was medical, here they took our temperatures and declared us fit to enter, and then immigration where they took $110, stamped our passports and we were in; they only took cash, hmmmmm I wonder why!!! Our American travelling companions did their entry visa on line and it only cost $60 for two!!!!!
We changed buses and drivers and off we headed along this very straight road for about an hour until we arrived in the town of Victoria Falls. A few minutes later we were deposited at our hotel, The Ilala Lodge. Checked in then immediately tried to book a Dinner Cruise on the Zambezi; we were a bit concerned in case we couldn’t get one being so late so headed to our room with everything crossed. The call came about 20-minutes later confirming we were on a boat tonight, so headed to the pool for some relaxation, and for the first time, the water was reasonably warm in a clean pool and clear, none of this environmental stuff with green water!!!!!
At the appointed hour our driver arrived and took us to the landing dock to board our dinner cruise ship, here we were put on a table with another couple, a nice couple from Italy. Though their English was limited, we had a great time, lots of laughs as we chased hippos and crocks with limited success. The food was excellent, but too much, and as much alcohol as one wanted. It was an excellent evening cruising the Zambezi watching the sunset, a memory to cherish. The Zambezi river is the natural border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, it is very wide and averages 4-meters in depth.
All good things come to an end so re-boarded our coach and were deposited at our hotel, the falls tomorrow.