Flight to Victoria Falls
The final day of this trip includes a highlight: the flight yesterday to Okawango, which extends the journey to these eastern regions compared to the heart of the Namibian wonders: Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. First, you need to enter Zimbabwe, which used to involve a very complex procedure.
Also today The sunrise offers a beautiful view. which will leave a lasting impression on us and more. After the last outdoor breakfast and having packed up the tents with a now professional skill, we head to Kasane to take a look at the Cunda River, just a few hundred meters before it merges with the Zambezi River. We stop briefly near a couple of buffaloes in rest mode. Returning, we deliberately take the wrong turn and at the Kazungula intersection, we turn left to see the ferry boarding for the Zambian side. Just before the gates, we are stopped by a guard: we cannot proceed unless we are heading to Zambia. Nearby, a family of antelopes graze nonchalantly. This time, we take the right road amidst normal traffic and trucks waiting in line; after a couple of kilometers, we finally reach the border with Zimbabwe. We quickly cross from Botswana: stamps are affixed to our passports, and we fill out a questionnaire asking for our opinion on our experience: the answer can only be positive. A simple country, lagging behind European standards but at the same time advanced compared to African ones, ranking among the top ten countries in the world with no internal conflicts. A model to emulate before anything else. Upon reaching the Zimbabwean border, there are few vehicles but the station is small, so we quickly fill it out. We join the queue to pay the 30 USD per vehicle and are taken care of by a "customs officer" authorized to handle our paperwork. Probably without an intermediary, it would not be possible to enter the country. We knew this from the start, as well as knowing that the service is not free: for the vehicle, we spend 100 USD, at least half of which will go towards fees and administrative expenses. The staff are friendly and almost carefree, despite our expectation of the strictness that usually characterizes officials in authoritarian states. It will take a little over an hour to complete the formalities, and by mid-morning, we leave for what was once Rhodesia. In fact, our journey lasts only a few hundred meters; we are stopped at a local police checkpoint. We are asked with a stern tone to show the triangle, which we retrieve from under the back seat. At this point, we are required to show the second triangle, as Zimbabwe, with its narrow roads, requires one in front and one behind the vehicle for safety reasons. Since we don't have it, we are fined 10 USD. We are given a formal ticket, which further wastes our time: I sign, pay, and leave. We cover the 80 km separating us from Victoria Falls by driving through red clay hills until the town appears before us. This is a corner of Africa for classic tourists who come to see and spend time together, rather than to discover and experience what they are in. Victoria Falls, which originated around and on the business generated by the adjacent waterfalls, is an artificial town where prices are higher than in Europe, with shady individuals trying to exchange local currency illegally, and generally, there is a sense of having to be careful about what you do. We were already aware that Zimbabwe was not exactly a paradise before our departure: a country with a currency that is not even accepted in its own shops, and where the official currency is the US dollar. It takes someone very naive to fall for the trick of buying local dollars from unscrupulous sellers. figures that reach thirteen zeros (We're talking about trillions of dollars...). Let's immediately head out on the Zambezi Drive. beautiful views of the river before the waterfalls and we look for The Big Tree, a large baobab tree that stands out impressively.
Excursion to Dangerous Point
Next, we'll visit the Victoria Falls, and the cost of $30 will go to supporting some politicians, but for now, we want to focus solely on the spectacle before us. A few dozen meters away, we start to hear the roar and see the mist rising; shortly after, one of the seven natural wonders of the planet is revealed. Rather than a Niagara-style waterfall, there are many small and large waterfalls cascading down into a deep canyon that is 100 meters deep and over a kilometer wide. The tourist flow isn't very high, and it's easy to get around. A path in front of the waterfall allows you to see and to see up close and from every angle, the waterfalls. It seems that the southern shore The area has been specially designed to allow for better observation. On the other side is Zambia, with some tourists venturing together with local guides to several natural pools located right on the edge of the cliff. We continue eastward, when the path approaches the areas of greatest intensity, the waterfall certainly surprises us with a shower of mist. Arriving here during the dry season means seeing a less impressive flow, it's also true that in summer the weather is less stable and especially the fall creates visible fog several kilometers away, but obscures the view up close. The last section is currently dry, and from the posters at the entrance we can see that the river only reaches this point when there is the maximum flow. And it’s right here that you can find Dangerous Point, a natural hill without protection, from which you can take great photos but you need to be careful. Continuing further, you will find the historic iron bridge which connects to Zambia. After exiting the parking lot next door, we are stopped again at a checkpoint specifically designed to catch tourists under any pretext: the zealous officer accuses us of not having activated the turn signal while leaving, despite our reassurances, he orders us to turn on the headlights, performs a careful inspection around the off-road vehicle, and, since everything is in order, confirms our initial complaint. The fine costs 10 USD, we call a local to fill out the inevitable form, I sign, pay, and try to suppress my feelings so as not to complicate the situation. Two fines within a couple of hours, 20 dollars are not a huge amount, but at this moment, if I say anything, I end up in prison without even passing through customs. We comfort ourselves with waffles in the city center and are ready for a new adventure in the Zambezi National Park, a park where the main road runs alongside the large river for dozens of kilometers, where there is practically no one except the many animals that inhabit it. The route is quite challenging, we sometimes have to slow down almost to a stop, and without an appropriate vehicle, it would be difficult to complete the entire journey. Shortly after entering, we find ourselves facing a group of elephants stopped in the middle of the road, we pull over at a safe distance and wait for them to move so that we can continue. Some detours. on the riverbank they allow us to see the head of the hippos in the bathroom The road is 40 km long, and our goal is to cover 30 km so that we can return peacefully before 6 pm, when the park closes. Actually, we stop at the 29th kilometer when we see a herd of elephants We continue forward towards the road just ahead of us. Knowing its dangerous nature, we turn the vehicle around, stop for a couple of photos, and start heading back. The other animals we encounter include giraffes and zebras. dai facoceri to gnu, as well as the inevitable springboks and the rarer red-muzzled impalas. Now that we have seen everything we wanted to see, all that remains is to go and take possession of the rooms booked in a city lodge, have dinner, and prepare for our last night in Africa. Upon arriving at reception, we discover that there is no electricity in the city, so we take a shower by candlelight. At the restaurant, we will eat buffalo and beef meat, which is very tough, and the place seems more like a tourist trap than a typical local establishment. But in this area, one cannot expect to find the originality experienced elsewhere during the two weeks that have just passed.
