We left Phoenix with 3 of our fellow travelers and met the remaining 2 in the Emirates lounge in LA. A long direct flight from LA to Dubai -around 16 .hours. Emirates business class is a wonderful way to travel long distances. Interesting 16 hour flight leaving LA, traveling over Nevada and Utah before crossing into Canada over the Hudson Bay, NWT, Greenland and Russia before heading south to Dubai. We had lay flat seats so it's possible to get some sleep. There was also a stand up bar at the back of our section. They had a good choice of new movies and we watched a couple before falling asleep. We had about 4 hours in Dubai before embarking on our 8 hour flight to Johannesburg where we arrived at 6 am Monday morning. After a few hours wait we departed for Victoria Falls.
At Victoria Falls we were met by the fellow who was to be our guide the 3 days here. Good accommodation and we were all looking forward to a shower before departing on a sunset cruise. This was not to be as the Lodge had a major waterline break and there was no cleaning up.
The sunset cruise was on the Zambia river. We saw a lot of hippos and they are huge. They were the only animals we saw but there was a lot of colorful birds.
Tuesday March 28 - After a decent nights sleep and breakfast, we took a short walk around the lodge and encountered a large family of warthogs. We were then picked up by our guide to view Victoria Falls. Clad in ponchos and with plastic bags over cameras we walked the trail along The Falls. They are impressive but apparently not as much water flows over them as Niagara Falls and in a couple months will be basically dry. Len & I wore crocs which were a smart choice as some of our fellow travelers are still drying out their sneakers. From Victoria Falls we went to Zambia for more views of the Falls and the Victoria Falls railway bridge which took 14 months to build and was completed in 1905. The brave can bungee jump from the bridge or do a zip line across the river. Five of us did the bridge walk along a catwalk just below the bridge deck. We had safety harnesses on and had to attach our safety lines to the cable along the catwalk. When this bridge was built it was the longest, highest railway bridge in the world. We questioned the guide about this as we've always heard that the Lethbridge high level bridge has this honor.
The Lodge had a vulture feeding early afternoon. Needless to say, I watched from a distance but it's hard to believe the vultures know the feeding time and they all wait in nearby trees or on the ground until the leftover meat is distributed around the feeding grounds. They do not go near the meat until the organizer has left the area and then there is a mad dash for the food. There appears to be hundreds of them converging on the area. It's a dirty, dusty 5 minutes until the meat has disappeared.
We had a free afternoon so a couple of us went to town, walked through the open market and visited a more upscale souvenir area. All the vendors in the open market were men and it was just like the hustlers in Mexico and the Caribbean Islands. Many of the large animal statues were made from recycled beer or soda cans and caps. We saw gorillas on our way into town.
During cocktail hour we saw many deer and there was a sighting of a giraffe at the watering hole. We missed the giraffe but did see a couple of elephants
take over the watering hole. The people closer to the watering hole said the giraffe and deer (elands) cleared the area as soon as the elephants approached.
Pictures: 1 -Railway bridge
2 & 3 - Victoria Falls
4 - family of warthogs
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