An unabashed tourist and her family explore the world one holiday at a time.
Our final evening in Zimbabwe was spent at the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge’s Boma dinner. It wasn’t an activity that we had booked originally, but came as a complimentary gift from our tour operator. And what a fantastic evening it turned out to be! We were dressed up in traditional clothes, had our faces painted and drank mageu from tin...
Up until recently I was completely unaware that the African lion was in danger. After all, what could possibly threaten the animal king? And the answer is, of course, humans. Through hunting, loss of prey, and natural habitat destruction, the free-ranging lion populations of Africa have declined by so much as 80% in the last 50 years! A shocking statistic...
The last few days of our trip to the town of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe was spent at the four-star Victoria Falls Safari Lodge. The lodge borders the Zambezi National Park and, situated as it is on a natural plateau, offers a fantastic view of a nearby waterhole and the park’s residents as they come each day to quench their...
I’m not a big fan of alcohol. I don’t like the taste of it and I don’t like not being in control of my own actions. After years of avoiding the stuff, even a single sip of wine results in an almost instantaneous headache. Gareth also isn’t much of a drinker and can down two beers at most before he...
The truck arrived at 6 AM. Gareth and I were bleary-eyed, but excited, for we were about to go on an elephant-back safari within a private concession of the Victoria Falls National Park. After a dusty 30 minute drive we arrived at the camp where we were introduced to the other tourists who would join us on the safari: another...
When I was nine years old my teacher asked us to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up one day. I drew myself sitting on a large tree branch, wearing a fedora hat (this was long before I had ever seen Indiana Jones), bulky brown walking boots and a backpack, gazing out over a...
No visit to the Victoria Falls Hotel would be complete without a dinner at the Livingstone Room. Although quite expensive at $40 per person for the six-course degustation menu (another $26 dollars for an appropriate glass of wine per course, which we decided to go without), Gareth and I felt it was an experience not to be missed. We had...
What would a trip to the Grand Old Lady of the Falls be without high tea on the verandah? Dainty sandwiches, strawberry jam and cream on scones, and slices of delicious finger cakes, accompanied by tea (or coffee, if you’d rather) served from a silver tea pot. You can sit back in the comfy chair and watch the spray from...
The reason we went to Zimbabwe instead of Zambia for our trip to view the Victoria Falls, was because I absolutely insisted on staying in the Victoria Falls Hotel, also known as “the grand old lady of the Falls”. It’s a five-star Edwardian style hotel built in 1904 and evokes all the best memories of the colonialist era without any...
Since we were delayed for so long at the border post between Botswana and Zimbabwe, we barely had time to dump our luggage in our hotel room before we were whisked off to our first scheduled activity. Our reason for visiting Zimbabwe was to go see the world-renowned Victoria Falls, and as it turned out our first view of it...