Day 21
Door: Elke
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Elke
29 September 2018 | Zimbabwe, Victoria Falls
We had another 4.45 start, but we only had to pack our stuff and clean the tent, because our guide and cook would pack up all tents, to ascertain they were proper and clean for the next group. We went on a game drive by jeep in Chobe NP and what an awesome park this was! It is not surrounded by fences and driving into the park from the street, seems like driving into a park… quite literally. It has a very cozy, amiable, small-scale feel to it and boy did we get close to the animals there. When it comes to seeing large herds of animals, Kenya and Tanzania are better destinations, but when it comes to getting up close and (luckily not too) personal, I would recommend Chobe and it comes with a free and thorough African massage as well!
Although the first surprise we got there was not up close, it was still very exciting. We had not seen any leopards during the trip and were hoping to see one on this last game drive. No promises were made, but we were told that it is not unlikely to see one in Chobe. One of the first stops of our ranger was near a tree with a vultures nest in the top. We could see that this was a standard sight as there were two jeeps there already, but when Willem had a first look through the binoculars he mentioned that he saw more dots than he would expect from vultures and another look made it clear that we were in fact looking at a leopard feasting on baby vultures. We stood there for quite some time as more and more jeeps gathered around. Through my binoculars it was a great sight, although the foliage still blocked the view regularly. My camera on the other hand did not even come close to revealing a leopard. Throughout the trip I had wished many times that my camera was as clear and optically apt as my binoculars, on the other hand, I do think it also has a certain charm to it to know that you really should have been there and that it is only possible to enjoy it to its fullest at that time.
At one point we were given the choice by our ranger to wait, as the leopard would have to come down at some point and walk away, but there was no telling when that would happen, or to move on and look for other game. We opted to move on, which may not have been the best move as other jeeps kept watching and other group members did watch the leopard climb down and walk off.
One of our next stops was a group of vultures. When we asked whether we could get a bit closer the ranger told us we could, but it would stink as those vultures would also be feasting on something that wasn’t pretty (or smelling pleasantly). Interested in the wild life, we asked the ranger to ignore the stink and drive closer, which is when we started to understand that we had slightly underestimated the stink the ranger was talking about coming off a dead elephant.
After our game drive we drove off to Zimbabwe. We were warned that the border crossing here would likely take more time than we had experienced at the previous borders. One of the reasons being that the visa are still written by hand, a process that I did not quite understand, as the officers at the border would copy information from a computer screen on our visa and then they would return our passport with a receipt on which all the necessary information was printed, as whatever was written on the visa would be illegible. Anyway, I guess it takes people off the streets, not just by employing the officers, but also be keeping people wanting to cross the border stand in line for a long time.
As both our guide and cook were Zimbabweans, they could get in the short line, but our group had to get in line. Only three ‘windows’ were open and there were a few dozen people in line before us. Luckily one group in front of us had re-entry visa, so their guide had checked and confirm that they could pass through another line. This helped, but at the speed the line was moving, not a lot. Our guide started ‘advising’ those in line in front of us. Those with a re-entry visa were send after the big group, a Zimbabwean family was directed to the other building, where they could get in quickly. And then finally the first member of our group was first in line, but right at that time it was his turn the window was closed. When the visa are written they are literally carbon copied and the carbon book of this particular officer was full, so he had to go to the adjacent building to get a new book, we thought it was a joke, but it was not. When he walked past us on his way back, we gave him a loud cheer, but then he informed us that they ran out of books for the kind of visa that we needed, so at his window he would only be handing out the more expensive re-entry visa. And as we found out, also this was not a joke. So we move on to the line for the remaining two windows.
By the time it was my turn, I handed over my passport, the form we had already filled out the night before and the $30 fee. Right before finishing my visa, the officer got distracted by a question from a colleague. When he was done with this discussion, he was about to hand me my passport when he asked “Did you give me money already” and I got a bit scared as I did not have enough dollars left to pay again and I also did not feel like getting screwed like that. I calmly answered “yes”, and thought he should know as I had noticed that their standard procedure was to take care of the money first before doing anything else. Then the officer asked how much it was and I told him $30 and then he said something like “it’s not your money, now it is my money”. He handed me my passport when saying this, so I politely smiled and got out of there, but it did make it obvious again that Africans have a sense of humor that is very different from ours. Except for the bunny/giraffe-in-the-pothole-joke which I thought had some charm to it, I had rarely even come close to wondering if people were making jokes, as that really seems to not be done (at least not when white tourists are around). And it had repeatedly become clear that especially sarcasm is wasted on Africans, although our group members did tell me that I had sometimes perfected my sarcasm poker-face too well, so that even they were sometimes in doubt. When I for instance warned our cook that the fish he was attacking with full dedication was already dead, he extensively explained that he knew, but that it was frozen solid and that he was just breaking the ice before putting it on the barbecue (he might have thought that the fact that this fish was cut open and de-gutted was an obvious fact that got lost on me).
After we all paid for our visas and got them, we continued to Victoria Falls. On the 67 km between the border and this town we literally did not see any people at all. When we arrived at the campsite we first got a round of commercials on the activities that we could do there and that we could book for the next day. After some down-time near the pool in surroundings that felt more luxurious than we had gotten used to, we took the truck to a restaurant overlooking the gorge downstream of the waterfall, in terms of distance it would have been perfectly possible to walk, but our guide thought it would be better to go by truck as it would be dark already, and later we found out that that was probably a good choice, as that night a tourist got killed by an elephant that he ran in to while walking on the street.
We spent the night in tents that were similar to the tent that had been our home for about three weeks, but instead of mats on the floor, these tents had stretchers to sleep on.
Although the first surprise we got there was not up close, it was still very exciting. We had not seen any leopards during the trip and were hoping to see one on this last game drive. No promises were made, but we were told that it is not unlikely to see one in Chobe. One of the first stops of our ranger was near a tree with a vultures nest in the top. We could see that this was a standard sight as there were two jeeps there already, but when Willem had a first look through the binoculars he mentioned that he saw more dots than he would expect from vultures and another look made it clear that we were in fact looking at a leopard feasting on baby vultures. We stood there for quite some time as more and more jeeps gathered around. Through my binoculars it was a great sight, although the foliage still blocked the view regularly. My camera on the other hand did not even come close to revealing a leopard. Throughout the trip I had wished many times that my camera was as clear and optically apt as my binoculars, on the other hand, I do think it also has a certain charm to it to know that you really should have been there and that it is only possible to enjoy it to its fullest at that time.
At one point we were given the choice by our ranger to wait, as the leopard would have to come down at some point and walk away, but there was no telling when that would happen, or to move on and look for other game. We opted to move on, which may not have been the best move as other jeeps kept watching and other group members did watch the leopard climb down and walk off.
One of our next stops was a group of vultures. When we asked whether we could get a bit closer the ranger told us we could, but it would stink as those vultures would also be feasting on something that wasn’t pretty (or smelling pleasantly). Interested in the wild life, we asked the ranger to ignore the stink and drive closer, which is when we started to understand that we had slightly underestimated the stink the ranger was talking about coming off a dead elephant.
After our game drive we drove off to Zimbabwe. We were warned that the border crossing here would likely take more time than we had experienced at the previous borders. One of the reasons being that the visa are still written by hand, a process that I did not quite understand, as the officers at the border would copy information from a computer screen on our visa and then they would return our passport with a receipt on which all the necessary information was printed, as whatever was written on the visa would be illegible. Anyway, I guess it takes people off the streets, not just by employing the officers, but also be keeping people wanting to cross the border stand in line for a long time.
As both our guide and cook were Zimbabweans, they could get in the short line, but our group had to get in line. Only three ‘windows’ were open and there were a few dozen people in line before us. Luckily one group in front of us had re-entry visa, so their guide had checked and confirm that they could pass through another line. This helped, but at the speed the line was moving, not a lot. Our guide started ‘advising’ those in line in front of us. Those with a re-entry visa were send after the big group, a Zimbabwean family was directed to the other building, where they could get in quickly. And then finally the first member of our group was first in line, but right at that time it was his turn the window was closed. When the visa are written they are literally carbon copied and the carbon book of this particular officer was full, so he had to go to the adjacent building to get a new book, we thought it was a joke, but it was not. When he walked past us on his way back, we gave him a loud cheer, but then he informed us that they ran out of books for the kind of visa that we needed, so at his window he would only be handing out the more expensive re-entry visa. And as we found out, also this was not a joke. So we move on to the line for the remaining two windows.
By the time it was my turn, I handed over my passport, the form we had already filled out the night before and the $30 fee. Right before finishing my visa, the officer got distracted by a question from a colleague. When he was done with this discussion, he was about to hand me my passport when he asked “Did you give me money already” and I got a bit scared as I did not have enough dollars left to pay again and I also did not feel like getting screwed like that. I calmly answered “yes”, and thought he should know as I had noticed that their standard procedure was to take care of the money first before doing anything else. Then the officer asked how much it was and I told him $30 and then he said something like “it’s not your money, now it is my money”. He handed me my passport when saying this, so I politely smiled and got out of there, but it did make it obvious again that Africans have a sense of humor that is very different from ours. Except for the bunny/giraffe-in-the-pothole-joke which I thought had some charm to it, I had rarely even come close to wondering if people were making jokes, as that really seems to not be done (at least not when white tourists are around). And it had repeatedly become clear that especially sarcasm is wasted on Africans, although our group members did tell me that I had sometimes perfected my sarcasm poker-face too well, so that even they were sometimes in doubt. When I for instance warned our cook that the fish he was attacking with full dedication was already dead, he extensively explained that he knew, but that it was frozen solid and that he was just breaking the ice before putting it on the barbecue (he might have thought that the fact that this fish was cut open and de-gutted was an obvious fact that got lost on me).
After we all paid for our visas and got them, we continued to Victoria Falls. On the 67 km between the border and this town we literally did not see any people at all. When we arrived at the campsite we first got a round of commercials on the activities that we could do there and that we could book for the next day. After some down-time near the pool in surroundings that felt more luxurious than we had gotten used to, we took the truck to a restaurant overlooking the gorge downstream of the waterfall, in terms of distance it would have been perfectly possible to walk, but our guide thought it would be better to go by truck as it would be dark already, and later we found out that that was probably a good choice, as that night a tourist got killed by an elephant that he ran in to while walking on the street.
We spent the night in tents that were similar to the tent that had been our home for about three weeks, but instead of mats on the floor, these tents had stretchers to sleep on.
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
