The travels of Tim and Megan: Africa Safari: Zimbabwe

Day 35: Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

We woke up still feeling a little drunk from the night before. It was a bit of a struggle packing up our gear, although eggs on toast for breakfast greatly improved things. We left the camp at Livingstone just after 8am and we had our shortest drive of the whole tour - just 20 minutes to the border crossing into Zimbabwe.

The crossing itself took a long time - over an hour - and it was scorching hot despite being early in the morning. Once we were across the border into Zimbabwe, we were almost immediately in Victoria Falls town, where we would spend the next three days.

Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and north and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three official languages: English, Shona and Ndebele. Zimbabwe began as the British self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia, created from land held by the British South Africa Company. Zimbabwe's independence from Britain was internationally recognised in 1980. The population of Zimbabwe is around 13 million and the capital and largest city is Harare.

Victoria Falls is a town of about 20,000 people on the southern bank of the Zambezi River at the western end of the Victoria Falls themselves. Aside from being home to one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, the town is far enough away from the big centres of Harare and Bulawayo that it has escaped much of the political and economic unrest that has plagued Zimbabwe since the 1990s, ensuring that tourism has remained steady in the region.

On arrival in town, we stopped in at an adventure company and heard about all the activities on offer. Victoria Falls is a kind of adrenalin capital, similar to Queenstown in New Zealand, but with wild animals thrown in.

We chose to steer clear of the bungy jumping (a 111-metre high fall from a bridge over the Zambezi) and other adrenalin activities. This proved to be wise, given that an Aussie tourist miraculously survived when her bungy rope snapped as she was falling at the very same bungy site, just weeks after we were there. She fell 30 metres into the crocodile-infested Zambezi River, passed out on impact, woke a few seconds later, struggling to keep afloat as her legs were still tied together and only avoided drowning in the rapids when the rope got caught in rocks and she managed to haul herself out of the water. Scary stuff.

We signed up for the "Walk with Lions" and we seriously considered doing a helicopter ride over the Victoria Falls waterfall, but in the end decided against that. We also opted not to do the elephant ride, as we had done that in Thailand in 2004.

After choosing our activities, we checked into the camping ground and pitched our tents. We thought it was pretty cool when the clock ticked over to 11.11am on 11/11/11. It was insanely hot - easily over 40 degrees and so dry. Apparently there was a heat wave in southern Africa while we were there, meaning there were unusually high temperatures for the time of year. We sought refuge in Pizza Inn (a good restaurant just down the road from our camping ground). It actually combined a bakery, a pizza place, a fried chicken place and an ice cream parlour all in the same shop. Brilliant. We had delicious pizza for lunch and enjoyed the air conditioning!

There were loads of young guys in the streets who pestered us to buy things off them every time we walked down the street. Most of them were selling old Zimbabwe currency (which is no longer legal tender) for novelty value. The hyper-inflation in the country in 2008-09 meant that bank notes up to 10 trillion Zimbabwe dollars were printed. These are now sold as souvenirs - we bought a 20 billion dollar note for about US$2. Quite a good deal, we thought!

While we felt sorry for them, the street vendors were also really annoying - they were so persistent. When they realised we did not want to buy anything from them, they would ask if we wanted to swap shoes with them or they would ask us to give them T-shirts or other clothing. It was sad, as they were very poor.

The camp was quite cool - it had a big swimming pool and a nice bar area. Our time in Zimbabwe was more or less free time - so we could choose which optional activities we wanted to do and the rest of time was spent chilling out. We hung out at the camp for a while and Tim cut his hair with Andrew's clippers. Then later in the afternoon we walked back across the border into Zambia to the bungy jumping bridge to watch Mike, Sara and Susan do their bungy jumps, bridge swings and flying fox slide things. It was scarily high looking from the bridge down to the river below. But the guys didn't seem to be too nervous and they all had a blast. There was a sign in the middle of the bridge that marked the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe and, as you can see from the photo below, Tim got a rare photo of himself spread across two countries...

It was so hot in the afternoon and there was very little shade anywhere near the bungy jump bridge. We were all very dehydrated and Megs almost fainted from the heat. Not good. Back at camp, we sat by the pool for a while and took in loads of water. In the evening, we had a big dinner with our whole tour group at a restaurant at Kingdom Hotel. It was a buffet dinner, with an emphasis on meat (oh Africa we love you). We had delicious soup, all sorts of amazing meat (including game such as ox tail, crocodile and wildebeest), veges and salads. Fantastic.

Day 36: Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

Sadly we did not have a great sleep - the camping ground was right next to a nightclub, which played really bad music very loudly until about 2am... It was also stupidly hot, so we couldn't have slept anyway. We woke early but lazed in the tent until 7.30am. Saturday signalled the last breakfast with our old crew. We were getting a new crew and some new tour members for the last leg of our marathon tour. Mwai cooked us fried eggs and baked beans on toast for our last breakfast. Brilliant. After brekkie, we charged some of our electronics and put a load of washing in to be cleaned. Then we set off for our lion walk at 10am.

We got picked up in mini vans from the camping ground and we drove about 15-20 minutes out of town to the Lion Encounter enclosure. Lion Encounter operates the African Lion Rehabilitation and Release into the Wild Programme on behalf of, and supported by, "ALERT", the African Lion and Environmental Research Trust. Given the rapid decline in free-ranging lion populations (80-90% in the last 50 years) and the reduction of much of their natural habitat throughout Africa, ALERT supports assisted lion reintroduction programmes.

The Programme run by Lion Encounter is a four stage long-term project. Cubs born in captivity are removed from their mothers and raised by humans in what is as close to their natural environment as possible. Once they are old enough, they are released into a "controlled environment" where there is limited competition for food and then eventually they are released into the wild.

When we arrived, we were given a safety briefing and an explanation of the project and what they hope to achieve through it. Lion Encounter had five cubs at the time we visited and the costs of feeding them, let alone maintaining their habitat etc, was huge. The tourist visits to walk with the lions was a means of raising awareness of the rapid decline in lion population and of raising money to fund the project.

We were each given a stick that we had to hold at all times in case the lions got too playful with us, and we were given some instructions on where we could and could not stand and where we could pat the lions etc. It was all very exciting. Then we walked through the dry, arid bush for a few minutes until we came to the spot where two cubs were sleeping on the ground. They were huge! We had expected small cubs, around the size of a labrador, but these "cubs" were massive.

They were brother and sister and were both 17 months old. Apparently they both weighed around 90kg. Fully grown males weigh about 260kg, while fully grown females will weigh over 150kg. Cubs are born with light-coloured spots, which gradually fade and are gone by the time they reach two years of age.

Initially we took turns patting the lions while they slept. They loved having the bellies rubbed. They were just like domestic cats - purring as we patted them. Their fur was surprisingly soft and we were blown away by how big their paws were. Even their back paws, which are smaller than their front paws, were bigger than Tim's hands (which are like buckets). After we had all patted the lion bellies and got some photos with them, the Lion Encounter guy whistled and the cubs jumped to attention and followed him off into the bush for a walk. We then took turns walking alongside the lions for 20 minutes or so.

Despite the way lions lazily amble along, our cubs moved at a quick pace. We had to stay behind their hind legs at all times. If you move in front of a lion, their hunting instinct will kick in and they will chase you! At this age, they would only want to "play" with us if they chased us, but unfortunately they play with their teeth and their paws and they are incredibly powerful animals. Their enclosure (or area) is not actually enclosed at all, meaning that other wild animals can come in whenever they please, which could pose a risk for the cubs. At night the cubs sleep in an enclosed hut sort of thing, to keep them safe from hyenas, leopards and other lions.

Despite not having a pride to teach them to hunt, their natural instincts were clearly there, as they had worked together to kill a baboon a few weeks earlier. The guides were really impressed with them for showing such good hunting skills at a young age. While we were walking with them, one of the cubs spotted a guinea fowl off in the distance and she tensed up and then took off towards it, almost bowling the guide out of the way as she went. After that excitement, the cubs stopped at a pond for a drink and then they found a big tree to sit under and rest in the shade. Lions are notoriously lazy animals in the heat of the day!

Our encounter with the lions was absolutely amazing - probably the highlight of the whole African tour and one of the most spectacular experiences of our lives. Everyone was buzzing for the rest of the day. We had drinks and snacks back at the Lion Encounter office, while we watched the DVD of our experience. It was a really good DVD and we just had to buy it as a record of our lion encounter. The walk with lions was an expensive activity, but everyone agreed it was absolutely worth every cent and, even if only a portion of that money goes towards lion conservation, then it is a fantastic cause!

Back at camp, we grabbed a quick lunch at the Pizza Inn bakery and then we had a cruisy afternoon. Tim did some emails and blogging in a great internet cafe (with air conditioning) and Megan went for a massage. Later in the afternoon, we hung out by the pool with some of the others and had a few drinks.

We had a cheap and easy dinner and then chatted to the others for a while. We went to bed around 11.30pm, but we were again disturbed by the nightclub next to the camp and by a few members of our tour whose loud drunken shenanigans kept most of us up until 3am. Thankfully a huge thunderstorm with super impressive lightning rolled in around 3am, which sent the drunkards to bed. Luckily, it actually didn't rain for that long, so our tents remained dry.