Victoria Falls & Cape Town

Victoria Falls is the only part of Zimbabwe that we visited. From the lookout cafe we could see the bridge over Zambezi, into Zambia. We learned that the Zimbabwean president’s son was getting married 2 days after our arrival at this very venue, and even the walk in front of the falls was going to be closed for the ceremony.

We stayed at Victoria Falls Hotel, an old, colonial style hotel.

Our first dinner was at Boma restaurant. It was quite a show! The food was buffet – not the best but ok – and the drum show was quite nice as well.

We woke up to watch the sunrise over Victoria Falls which was quite an amazing experience as we had the falls to ourselves and there was quite a lot of water spray as well. The local name for the falls is Mosi-oa-Tunya which means the cloud that thunders.

There is a video of the waterfalls in the morning here.

We spend the late morning wondering around the town and the shops (didn’t really buy much, just window-shopping). In the afternoon we went back to the falls for another walk – completely different experience, much busier, lots of rainbows, more water spray.

Dinner was buffet at one of the restaurants from the hotel. There was live singing and dancing – they got us to join in at the end!

Next day we did an amazing trip in a jet boat to the base of Victoria Falls and it was an amazing experience.

Dinner was equally spectacular – on a cruise boat on the upper part of the Zambezi. We saw a pack of hippos playing and frolicking in the water, it was quite an experience.

After breakfast on the last day of our organised tour, we said goodbye to the others, then headed to the airport. We flew Air Link to Cape Town – nice, new plane, smooth flight, excellent service (including food).
There was quite a bit of smoke over Cape Town due to a bushfire raging nearby. The views were still pretty nice. Our friend picked us from the airport and we got to see quite quickly what townships means (where it is not indicated to take a wrong turn).

Our friends took us for a drive to see Cape Town and the famous Table Mountain. We were surprised to see fog as we reached the city, but that quickly dispersed once we reached the other side and we were able to see Table Mountain. We drove up Signal Hill, getting beautiful views towards the valley still partly covered by fog, with more fog coming through from the ocean side. The atmosphere was amazing – fog was covering the commercial port so the vessels were using their fog horns producing a loud and interesting symphony. There is a purpose-built frame that you can use to take photos of Table Mountain.

On the other side of the hill we could see some nice houses just off Bantry Bay but the ocean was still covered by fog.

We kept driving to eventually reach the waterfront where we walked around and had some oysters, then walked through a local crafts market called Watershed, which had some really interesting things, then had lunch at a food hall nearby. On the walkway there was a stand from RSPCA offering dogs for adoption, heartbreaking!

We spent the evening relaxing at our friends’ place, admiring some Guinea fowls feeding, and geese landing in the trees for the night (joined slightly later by the Guinea fowls).

We also visited a very nice quirky little town called Franschhoek in a wine region nearby. There is a windy mountain pass with the same name. Here it was pretty nice, we didn’t really feel unsafe. There is a township here as well on the outskirts of the town, but it looks much nicer and has properly built houses.
We bought some nice chocolates from a local chocolatier and then had lunch at Glen Carlou winery (tried ostrich which was quite yummy) before admiring some exhibitions they had on (including one called The Book & The Sword by Jan Coetzee which was quite interesting).

Our flight back was nice and smooth – Airlink first to Johannesburg then Qantas to Sydney (where it was cold and miserable again) before the final leg to Perth.