Africa – 12th Sept 2008 – Day 10

What a wonderful sleep. The room is cool, quiet and very comfortable. We woke at 7.30, relaxed with a cuppa and then headed down for breakfast. What a wonderful spread. They had everything you can imagine and the food was good and hot. We sat on the outside veranda enjoying the view and the food.

After breakfast, we headed down the Victoria Falls. However, without going into Zimbabwe, we could not get a good view of the main falls. We went back to the concierge who recommended taking a trip to Livingstone Island by boat. We were lucky they had just two seats left today on the 10.30 trip.

The speed boat whisked us to the island weaving through the small rapids on the way. Once there we were offered a foul drink, supposed to give us energy. Initially we were not impressed as we could still not see the falls from our location.

The main guide asked us if we wanted to swim in the Zambezi or not. Fiona was not sure as she thought it might be too cold. The guide insisted we go as he said we would regret it if we did not. So, we went!!

Wow, what an adrenalin rush! They took us to the very edge of the falls, where we swum against the current, only 30 foot from the very edge of the falls. It seemed crazy, but other guides were in the water with us at all times and assured us nobody had ever been hurt.

They were right, the current was not too strong and we soon reached a small island of rock in the middle of the falls. We walked to the outer edge of the island where he showed us a deep, fast flowing pool of water. This is where we were to jump in, so we could reach the very edge of the falls. We looked at each other, wondering if this really was insane, but the guide had one of his fellow guides jump in to make sure everything was fine. Two other guests jumped first and looked fine. John went first, followed by Fiona. The experience was surreal. We sat on the edge of the fastest flowing part of the falls. John managed to reach over to the very lip. We both sat in this fast flowing pool of water protected by shallow rocks in a deep whirl pool of water. It is an experience neither of us will ever forget.

After swimming back to the main island, we had a tea and coffee and chatted to a couple of Americans who were also taking a year off as well a couple of Australians.

We came back to the hotel still buzzing from our trip. We decided to spend the afternoon sitting around the lovely swimming pool, relaxing, as we have been on the go ever since leaving the UK.

We sat around the pool, dipping in for a cool swim every now and again. At 3 we took afternoon tea on the sunny veranda. During tea the a particularly cheeky monkey, dived into someone’s cake plate and ran off with a muffin. The monkeys here are very tame and will take any opportunity to grab some food.

After tea we returned to our sun loungers, only to have two scrapping monkeys leap over John and his sun bed as great speed, screaming as they went!!

In the evening we drank cocktails on the sun deck and enjoyed another fabulous meal.

This hotel is very, very, very good. It has a wonderful feel to it, the staff are great and the facilities wonderful. We have one of the most basic rooms on offer, but basic it is not. It’s a long way to come, but we could see ourselves popping back some time in the future.

Today’s Victoria Falls experience will stay with us both for ever. We keep looking at the photo’s and video taken by our guides and still can not believe we sat 6 inches from the edge of one of the most impressive water falls in the world.