Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

baby elephant trying to reach our hot tub with its trunk

Victoria Falls is the 4^th largest falls in the world, a long expanse of cliffs with the mighty Zambezi pounding over them.  On our last visit several years ago, there was so much water, and therefore so much mist, that we couldn’t really see the Falls from the Zambia side, where we were staying.  We were soaked as we walked the circuit along the Zambian falls, but couldn’t see much more than the water pummeling the rocks far below the top of the Falls.

Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe side

This year, the water is low because of severe drought.  We stayed on the Zimbabwean side of the Falls, at the Victoria Falls River Lodge (which we liked a lot), fortunately, since the Zimbabwean Falls had a lot of water, while the Zambian side was completely dry.

The River Lodge is in the Zambezi National Park, home to large herds of elephants as well as giraffes, antelope, many hippos languishing in pools in the river, baboons, vervet monkeys, warthogs, crocodiles and occasionally some cats, which we didn’t see there.  The tents of the camp spread out along the Zambezi, open to the animals, with separate hot tubs (cold water) for each tent.

2 males giraffes fighting

As we were about to leave for a safari drive our second afternoon, I looked through our glass door to see 4 large mother elephants and several babies drinking from our hot tub.  One tiny baby, probably only 2 months old, was trying to get its trunk into the water, but couldn’t quite reach.  It kept moving its tiny trunk around, getting within inches of the water, but finally gave up and tried to encourage its mom to let it suckle.  More elephants kept coming up from the river to drink, so we called our guide to pick us up lest we enrage one of the huge mama elephants by walking near her baby.

Sable antelope

We gathered our group in our Land Cruiser, drove to a shallow pond in the middle of the camp, and sat there watching as at least 80 elephants flowed around us, drinking, uprooting trees and moving placidly towards their next foraging spot.  It was the highlight of our animal viewing.  Just amazing to sit in the midst of these huge, intelligent animals and watch them live their lives, if only for an hour.

Later that day, we were lucky enough to spot some Sable, very large antelope that I’ve only seen once before, despite having been on many game drives over the last 10 years.  In a dry ravine, we came upon 2 young male giraffes fighting, which consists of wrapping their necks around each other and doing a lot of shoving.  It looks like a large giraffe could easily break a smaller male’s neck, and I guess that does happen, but rarely, according to our guide.

hippo resting in the Zambezi River

There is a great walk through the forest along the Falls, which we enjoyed.  It’s about 2 miles to the Falls bridge and back, with lots of points for viewing the Falls and the Zambezi River rapids below.  On our way to Kruger National Park, we walked across the bridge, entering Zambia halfway across, to take a flight from Livingstone, Zambia, to one of Kruger’s airports.  The bridge crosses a deep gorge.  Walking takes about 10 minutes, including photo stops, and is a fun way to cross the border.  Our van met us on the Zambian side with our luggage, so an easy transit.

young elephant and baby sibling

The Zambezi National Park is relatively small, so doesn’t have a lot of large predators, but we enjoyed our game drives there very much.  We have stayed at hotels on both sides of the Falls and, from now on, would always stay inside the Park at one of the tent camps along the river.  Our guide was excellent and enthusiastic, encouraging us to do longer drives to see some of the farther parts of the Park, which we really appreciated.

I do think, if you want to see lots of animals, and can only go to Africa once, East Africa (Kenya’s Masai Mara and Tanzania’s Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater) is the place to go.  There are so many more animals there.  When I was there in August with my granddaughter, we saw up to 1000 zebras each day and many thousands of antelope, in addition to lots of lions (27 in the Crater one day alone), leopards, hippos, elephants, giraffes (I love them) and so much more.  In Southern Africa, where we’ve done safaris in Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa and Botswana, there are fewer tourists, but also many fewer animals.  We saw them mostly by the one’s to ten’s, compared to the dozens to thousands in East Africa.

sunset over the Zambezi

Nonetheless, there is so much to see in Southern Africa besides the game parks that it is well worth a visit.