After three weeks in the motherland, we’ve finally come back home. South Africa is such an amazing place… Other than the awesome wildlife and breath taking scenery, it was a very humbling experience learning and experiencing the culture of the people. I know that I was born in Africa and had lived there for 11 years… but back then as a child your focus is aimed elsewhere and you can’t really appreciate things for what they are because your life is so much simpler. Personally the highlight of the trip was learning about the history of the countries we visited and the struggles that the people faced from day to day. It was definitely a moving experience.

After spending almost 24 hours traveling and being in transit we arrived in South Africa. Things aren’t as efficient in this country in comparison to the places that we’ve visited. We spent almost 3 hours waiting to go through customs, collect our luggage and to be picked up by our courtesy shuttle… I guess we worked out why the shuttle was free… after waiting almost 1.5 hours for it we finally got picked up. When we arrived at the Gemini Back Packers Lodge we were so tired that we crashed and slept for almost 12 hours. We had an early start the next day being picked up at 5am ready for our big drive to Victoria falls which is located on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. This was the start of out Acacia Africa Tour which was a 10 days camping/traveling tour though Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

The first day of our tour we drove 900 Km’s in one day and it took us about 13 hours!! Even though Botswana is the “dust ball of Africa” it had some amazing wildlife out on the plains along the roads we drove along. We had lunch in Francistown which is the second largest city in Botswana and camped overnight in Nata which is a town close to the border of Zimbabwe..

We arrived in Livingstone (Zambia) the next day and had plenty of tours/trips available for us to choose ranging from white water rafting, canoeing, bungee jumping, quad biking etc. On our first night in Livingstone we did a sunset cruise along the Zambezi River and were provided with dinner and free alcohol all night long! We spotted pods of hippos and elephants that had come to the riverbank to drink water.

The next day Tash and I decided to do the Lion Encounter. We were taken to Zimbabwe at a site where we were able to walk with 3 lions who were “tame” and were part of a breeding/conservation program. It was a bit scary when you think that these guys are at the top of the food chain for a reason. After being briefed we began our walk and were met by 2 male lions and 1 lioness who were roughly 18 months old and weighing in at about 120kg each! Phoenix the dominant male was such an amazing creature. Even though his mane was not fully developed you could see the prestige that this creature bestowed. The commanding power that was evident when you looked into the his eyes was intimidating at times, yet he still played  around like a house cat playing with pieces of bark jumping and climbing up trees. The second part of the tour introduced us to 3 cubs that were 6-9 months old. They were much more playful and one of the cubs started to gnaw on Tash’s leg. Since the cubs looked like oversized cats Tash didn’t mind until it started to get a bit carried away and the trainer intervened. Walking with the King of the jungle is one experience that I’ll never forget… 

Victoria falls is known to the locals as “Mosi Oa Tunya” which means “The Smoke That Thunders.” The falls were a disappointing sight at this time of the year because it is the dry season. From the Zambian side of the border there was not much flow at all and I didn’t realise how bad it was until I took to the skies… I did an optional side tour through a company called Batoka Sky who offered a 15 minute flight over the Victoria falls in what is called a Micro light. It’s basically a hang glider with an undercarriage that can seat 2 people and is driven by a propeller. It was such an amazing view flying 1500 feet over the falls and though the canyons. I got to see why everyone said that the falls are much better when viewed from the Zimbabwe side of the border… even though we were so high up you could still feel the spray from the thundering falls. We weren’t allowed to take cameras up for safety reasons, but we had plenty of shots taken by the pilot using a wing mounted camera.