We had more plans for Botswana, which is arguably the destination in South Africa for wildlife viewing. Before we were to dive down into the wilderness in search of game, we had another must-see stop on the agenda though: Victoria Falls. The Zambezi thunders down 100m on a lenght of more than 2km, rivaling the Iguazu and Niagara falls for its size and splendour. It also shares the fact that its waters are bordered by at least two countries, in this case Zambia and Zimbabwe. As the avid reader will have recognised, we were in neither of these. Luckily, the Northeastern corner of Bostwana has border crossings with both though, so our genius plan was to cross into Zambia, then go over to Zimbabwe at the falls and come back from there to Botswana. There were a few inherent flaws with this plan, but we couldn't have known beforehand.
We started out with a short 20 minute drive to the border in the morning. The Botswana post is on the south side of the river (5 minutes), then you need to cross the Zambezi on a rickety ferry that leaves the second the single truck that fits on it has stopped its engine. In fact, it left that fast that Yeya had to jump across half a meter of water to make it as she had to travel as a passenger (only driver in car). The Zambia side then resembled what our story-book expectations of an African border had been. Various ramshackle buildings with hand-written signs on it, half a dozen "helpful" friends showing us the way and us - clearly unprepared - not having a clue what the current exchange rate for Zambian kwatchas was. That said, after a bit of negotiation with the street money-changer, a 60 minute treasure hunt between immigration, customs, the police, the tax office and some third party car insurance brokers and the payment of US$50 and roughly 300.000 kwatchas (check Google for the rate) we - and more importantly our car! - were officially and legally in Zambia. One interesting learning: Irish nationals don't have to pay for a visa in Zambia (all others pay US$50).
We had to briefly recover from this experience with a nice lunch in Livingston, before making our way to the falls. Another US$45 changed ownership from our pockets into Zambian state coffers, but it was fully worth it. We walked every meter of available path on the Zambian side of the falls, got soaked by the "mist that thunders", saw a big family of baboons close up and had some great views on the very, very impressive falls themselves. We both have seen Iguazu, and Victoria Falls certainly can hold its own against that. At the height of the wet season, up to 7 million liters of water flow over the edge every second(!), which in layman's terms, is a whole lot of water! To give some things away, we saw the falls from the Zimbabwe side the next day and liked that one as well, but our vote goes to the Zambia side both for the views and the diversity of things to see and do. All in all it took us nearly three hours to see everything.
After all the excitement, we had to relax and since our wallet was taking a beating anyway, we decided on a decadent sunset cocktail at the Royal Livingston. This posh, colonial style hotel sits directly on the Zambezi river about 300m away from the edge of the falls and you can both see the sunset and see and hear the thunder of the water going over the edge. We both laughed when we saw a group of monkeys swiping cucumber slices from an empty table right next to us by the riverfront (we had seen something similar in Kruger at breakfast), but sure thing we were next in line. Not three minutes later the same monkey jumped on our table and grabbed my (full!) cocktail glass. In a reflex motion I grabbed it as well and for a split second things were undecided as we both held on to the glass. The monkey then accepted my considerable weight advantage and decided to retreat - without my cocktail. This kept us talking for a while and hadn't the majority of backpackers in our lodge that evening been drunk and unpleasant, we might well have shared the story over a drink. Given their state, we preferred to keep to ourselves, though.
The next day saw our next border crossing. The Zam/Zim border (as it is lovingly called) across the bridge over the Zambezi at Victoria Falls is quite a common one for tourists, so organisation was much better than at the ferry. Extortionism was alive and kicking here as well though. Road tax, carbon tax, car insurance and a "commercial vehicle fee" for our rental car were due and this time the Irish visa was nearly twice as much as the German one (which came at US$30). All in all, we supported the struggling Zimbabwe government with nearly US$250 for an 8 hour visit to their country. We had learned by then that doing the trip the other way around would have been much easier (and considerably cheaper!), but in hindsight that was easy to conclude and since we already had done half the trip there wasn't much we could do.
The main activity of the Zimbabwe part of the trip was the aforementioned visit to the falls (which was not as good, but even more expensive than on the Zambia side). We added a short drive through the city, during which we bought a couple of trillion Zimbabwe $ for substantially less Botswanian Pula. For those not quite fluent in currencies, Zimbabwe had hyperinflation until 2009, when he government decided to introduce the US$ as legal tender. Before that, the largest bill that still got printed was a staggering 100 trillion Zim $. Really! Speaking of money, we had hoped to do some activities at the falls such as rafting, but the pricing was prohibitive given our substantial border expenses, so we decided to take it easy and head back to Botswana (or Bots, as the locals call it). On our return we drove through the Zambezi National Park in Zimbabwe, but either chose a bad time or a bad road, since we saw nothing of interest at all. Our third border crossing in two days went very smooth and once again, the efficient, friendly - and cheap! - Botswana border procedures delighted us.
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