Geoff Jones

25090 A walking day at Victoria Falls

Wednesday 6th April

I didn’t sleep at all well, maybe it was the excitement of visiting the Victoria Falls a childhood dream or maybe it was the bed! The previous evening had been pretty awful with all the locals dossing about watching football 🙁 plus a silly ticketing system at the bar. Unfortunately for me I had already booked and paid for 4 nights.

For breakfast I took myself of to The Shearwater Cafe followed by a stream of the usual touts :-(, Interestingly Shearwater seem to own everything in Victoria Falls.

I wandered down to The Falls and paid my $30 entrance fee. The falls are totally spectacular and didn’t disappoint at all far better than I ever imagined just so wide, nearly a mile, the volume of water is totally immense making me wonder why so much of Africa is desert and that Zimbabwe is importing food from South Africa.

I took loads of photos until the inevitable happened and the camera became waterlogged with the spray 🙁 🙁 fortunately the iPhone kept working.

I went to the internal cafe, Shearwater again, and tried to dry it out. I was not alone 🙁 a lady had an identical D550 that had suffered the same fate, she was in a much worse position than me as her travelling was only just beginning. She is off to China via the ‘stans. It’s a small world – she recognised me from the border post!

In the afternoon we did another quick tour of the falls the wind must have changed direction as you could see the falls much clearer than in the morning so I was able to get a nice header pic in front of the main fall 🙂

Then it was back through the touts to the town

Apart from the camera a great ending to my first African trip 🙂 So pleased that I made it to the falls by using the train and safari vehicle. I wouldn’t have had time to bike the additional 1000 miles. Africa is just so vast it’s hard to imagine as you can see from the diagram.

So although I’ve biked 2000 miles it barely registers on the African scene 🙂

Once home I guess it will be time to send the Canon back to Colchester Cameras yet again! My next camera I think will be a Nikon which apparently are a lot more water resistant.

25089 Biking Kasane to Victoria Falls

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

I left The Old House jut before 8am after the owner rescued the girl from faffing about on her ancient Windows PC trying to sort the bill out.

Notice wind direction :-( — Notice wind direction 🙁

The day started with a brisk headwind as you can see from the flags image and a climb of cause. Reaching the main road I came across a huge queue of trucks waiting to get into Zambia. I turned of and went down the remarkably quiet road to the Zimbabwean border post, passing large troops of monkeys at the roadside.

At the border there was a queue of 3 trucks 🙂 so I just biked straight to the office. I must say I love these border crossings on a bike! No queues ultra friendly guys and all very civilised I handed over my $55 and in return my passport page was filled with a bright sticker (I later learnt that for $10 more you can get a visa that admits you twice).

So on I cycled I was surprised to see several trucks carrying loads of refined copper cathodes obviously from Zambia. Another interesting thing was no trucks were carrying containers. Lots of elephant dung on the road which I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t see any but an oncoming car stopped to warn me of a herd crossing the road 1km away so they are close. The only animal I saw apart from a dead snake was a poor tortoise in the road, I chivvied him up to get to the verge before a truck got him!

Finally I made it to the Shoestrings Lodge/Backpackers must say it was quite a bit worse than I expected with an uncomfortable bed and need of maintenance 🙁 Plus decidely expensive since Zimbabwe lost its currency to hyper inflation in 2008 (Ten Trillion notes are sold by the pesky touts in the street) they now use the US dollar.

I discovered it was $30 for entry to the falls but you could get a glimpse from the railway/road bridge so I walked there followed by a group of touts offering banknotes/carvings/bowls etc Maybe the train at $120 for a 3km ride and dinner would have been better 🙂

The Strava shows I rode 53.3mi with 1,152 feet of climbing.

My pics of the day are here

25088 Chobe River Excursion

Posted on April 4, 2016
3 Comments on 25088 Chobe River Excursion

Today was a rest day in Kasang catching up on my posts and getting my images online whilst my Botswana SIM card still works.

The Old House b&b has a frontage onto The Chobe River just before it merges with The Zambezi. They offer a 3 hour river trip heading along the Chobe National Park. Obviously I took it.

To my amazement it was just me and the driver/guide Albert , certainly not in KG’s class for either driving or guiding skills but we got by..

First animals were a huge troop of monkeys swinging in the trees, rapidly followed by bathing elephants, families of hippos, water ox, crocodiles and a huge herd of antelopes prancing around like ballerinas. Plus numerous birds.

All very interesting although somewhat marred by the poor light diue to rain clouds forming so that I couldn’t get a fast exposure time. Plus the zoom lens has now decided it won’t autofocus on maximum zoom any more.

The scariest thing is to see just how huge hippos are and how cavernous they can make their mouths..

Tomorrow I’m on my bike again to do the 80km or so to Victoria Falls passing through the Kazungula Border the only point on the planet where 4 countries meet 🙂

Todays fuxzzy pictures are here

25086 and 25087 Chobe Safari Drive – Maun to Kasane

Sat 2 April 2016 to Sun 3 April 2016

The larger than life character KG (Kgaga) appeared with his Toyota Land Cruiser to take me and my bike to the camping place near Savuti. We had an instant rapport especially since he is a carnivore and I a vegetarian but both Leo’s 🙂

Strange to be sat in a vehicle all day and Moves scored the lowest step count ever for me 1,302 🙁 although bad old Fitbit made it 9,149 due to the vehicle bouncing around so much.

It was a splendid drive once in the National Park to see dazzles (not herds) of Zebras was excellent and several journey’s of Giraffes. We came to the campsite as KG was errecting the splendid safari tent I suddenly thought why not sleep in the tent I’ve been lugging around for 7 weeks. Talk about bad decisions it became literally a sauna! sweat poured of me for the first hour or two and condensation was dripping everywhere 🙁

OK guys I'm full please stop staring at me! — OK guys I’m full please stop staring at me!

Once camp was up KG said we were now going on a 3 hour safari around the park, a big surprise for me, my own personal safari with a leading guide 🙂 see the photographs for what we saw, humungous elephant with a stunning ending, a lazy full, lion who yawned in front of us like some house cat 🙂 I learnt from KG that if you are camping and hear a lion or other animal nearby do not open the zip! To a lion a tent is an inanimate object not worth attacking whereas a worried face certainly is. 🙂

I then cooked my pasta and sauce over the fire whilst KG had his steak and beef sausages (no pork here). and so to my sauna 🙁

At 5.30a, after a night listening to lions shouting at each other, we were up again for another 3 hour safari with not that much wildlife to begin with although it was interesting to see other homo sapiens and guessing how much they had paid for the night according to their dress and photo equipment 🙂 KG saw the leopard tracks but alas no leopards. However, we did meet another couple of lions who just couldn’t be bothered to chase the nearby wildebeest and chose to do a bit of brotherly love instead.

Amazing tours and then we were off down the worst sand tracks, where we had a confrontation with a Honey Badger snarling and screaming at me, way more frightening than lions or elephants 🙁 thank goodness we were in the car, although the window was open. KG said it was because the car had become between him and his mate 🙁

At Muchenje I felt bad bombing down the tarmac road in the car 🙁 we finally made it to my previously booked b&b The Old House in Kasane on the banks of The Chobe.

Lots of pics here and here

We did a total of 480km! (300 miles) and poor KG had to drive all the way back! although I guess it’s probably 2oo miles without the game drives.