An unabashed tourist and her family explore the world one holiday at a time.
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...
I was going to write a long rant about the Zimbabwean border post at Kasane. I was going to go into excruciating detail about how that place is my personal definition of hell on Earth. How we stood in a queue with only fifteen people ahead of us for over three hours. How the sun beat down on us while...
I later asked our morning game drive ranger if he had seen the elephants I had spotted in the distance. His reply was that there were over 70 000 elephants in the Chobe National Park and they were the highlight of the afternoon game cruise, so no one paid them much mind on the regular game drives. “Elephants, hippo, buffalo....
When I packed for my three-week business trip to Tanzania, I had no idea what clothes to take. I knew it was going to be very hot, but I couldn’t go to work in shorts and a T-shirt. I still had to look professional in spite of the humidity and the fact that two of those three weeks would be...