Victoria Falls the Second

Important things first. This is where I was finally reunited with my bag 10 days after arriving in Africa. There was a hairy moment when the place I was picking my bag up from said 'Bags, no, we haven't received any bags...' but it turned out that bags always get sent to their other office in town (they couldn't have said that first???) Ah, that sweet reunion! Imagine me spreading all of my belongings out on the bed and wallowing in the glorious variety of it all. I didn't actually do that, but you can imagine it if you want.

So our amazing time in the national parks of Zimbabwe was at an end and we were back where we started, Victoria Falls, albeit on the Zimbabwean side now. We went back to the falls to see them from this side and I personally think the view from Zimbabwe is better than the view from Zambia. Feel free to contradict me - you'll have to travel to Zambia and Zimbabwe to be able to so I reckon that would be worth it. And while we had other close encounters with baboons, these ones at least kept their hands to themselves. Also, we didn't get quite so wet. That's not because we actually stayed dry, just because it would be scientifically impossible to be any wetter than we were on the Zambian side.

Bomani Tented Camp, Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe

Bomani Tented Camp is in the south of Hwange National Park, and it is remote. To get there, we had to take a their tram, which they run on the colonial-era rail tracks built by some bloke with a great vision of trains running from South Africa to Egypt but who didn't count on the post-colonial administration taking the particular turn that it has done so the tracks are not in great shape now. Useful for us though!

More early mornings, more safari drives, more lists with lots of commas or again I could just tell a couple of stories.

The Hide, Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe

Elephant: "Hello!"

Okay, so this is where the blog posts have the potential to get really boring. You see, I could tell you about how we got up really early and went for a drive, had a siesta, then went for another drive. I could write a really long list with lots and lots of commas (and I do like commas) with all the animals that we saw. But really, you just want to scroll down and see the photos (in fact you might already have done that).

Before you do though, let me tell you just a couple of stories from our stay at The Hide in Hwange National Park.

Chundu Island, Zimbabwe

Chundu Island is a little (very little) island in the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe. They run on solar power and tank water. They have no internet. There is apparently one spot where you can sometimes get phone reception if you hold your phone up in the air. And somehow, from this island, a lovely couple, one Zimbabwean, one originally British, run a lovely safari camp.

Victoria Falls the First

If you ever find yourself at Victoria Falls in Zambia in late February on a beautiful sunny day, and you see the men renting out raincoats and you think, 'That's silly, why would I need a raincoat? It's so sunny!' then you are a fool who deserves everything that you get. I rented a raincoat from them - I did pack a raincoat but then my bag didn't make it to Zambia so that was totally worthwhile - and it's a massive, made-of-some-kind-of-reinforced-canvas monstrosity poncho of a thing. Plus, you wear a plastic bag raincoat underneath. And you still get soaking, hair dripping down your back kind of wet, should have worn a shower cap and swimsuit kind of wet, glad I'm wearing Will's thongs (flip flops for the Australian-challenged) kind of wet (which meant Will didn't have thongs, which meant that he wore his hiking shoes which he tells me 'filled up with water'). There's a lot of water going over them there falls!

New York

If you're reading this, then you have almost made it to the end of the North American portion of our travels, as New York was our last stop before Africa. We had two days in the city and spent one of them sightseeing, then spent the other running general errands like posting home extra winter gear, getting haircuts and repacking for flying (had to find all those pesky gels and liquids that make their way into your handbag). I don't think you particularly need to hear about the errands day, but here's what we did with our sightseeing day (and the night before).

Boston

Boston is very proud of its history, particularly its history as regards the American Revolution, so not surprisingly most of what we did while we were there related to that. The rest of what we did involved snowbanks taller than me, but that was the less fun part of the visit so we won't talk about that (just a lot of frustration involving traffic, no carparks and general difficulty getting around). Here's the highlights of what we did in Boston.

Where in the world: Blog Map!

Ok, so we are actually in Trondheim in Norway staying with friends when we started trying to figure out just how far we had driven in North America which is apparently pretty close to the distance from Melbourne to Trondheim!  That's a long way.