Across the border - Zimbabwe
Writer: Sarah Kingdom Photography: Individually credited
M
y first visit to Victoria Falls was almost a quarter of a century ago...and when I put it like that, I somehow feel rather old! I had visited, with my parents, when I was about 12 and revisited when I was working in Livingstone aged 21, but since then I had barely set foot in Zimbabwe for 15 years. Now, all these years later, I was returning with my own teenage sons to see what had changed. But first we had to cross the famous Victoria Falls Bridge from Zambia and get through the ridiculously lengthy queues at the Zimbabwean border post; it was the Vic Falls marathon the following day and the queue of runners crossing from Zambia was horrendous! Finally, just as we were wilting and our tempers fraying, we got our passports stamped, various paperwork for the car completed and were into Zimbabwe and on our way to Chundu Island.
Accessible only by boat, Chundu Island is a tear-drop-shaped island in the Zambezi River, 21 kilometres upstream of the Victoria Falls, in the Zambezi National Park. At just over a kilometre long and about half a kilometre wide, the camp is spread out amongst huge mahogany, acacia and water berry trees and was the perfect start to our Zimbabwe visit. We reached the island as the sun had nearly set, and the stunning red skies above and the inky black waters beneath our boat made for a surreal and magical arrival. Woken at dawn by a friendly knock on the door and a delivery of tea and coffee, it was a challenge to drag ourselves out of warm beds; however the mist over the water outside our room was spectacular. After a light breakfast around the fire we were on the boat, crossing back to the main section of the Zambezi National Park and setting off on a three-hour safari on foot.
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TRAVEL & LEISURE ZAMBIA
Zambezi National Park covers an area of 56,000 hectares and is home to elephant, lion, buffalo and leopard. In addition, sable, eland, giraffe, kudu, waterbuck and impala are found here; along with plenty of smaller game and over 400 species of birds… clearly we were only going to be able to cover a tiny fraction of this on our walk!
Our guides Paul and Blessed were full of information and we learnt about the traditional uses of much of the local plant life. We ‘got wind’ of a herd of over 60 zebra up ahead, who fortunately had not yet ‘gotten wind’ of us and Paul was able to guide us silently towards the herd. We quietly crept to less than 40 metres away before a few individuals finally noticed us, by which stage our tummies were rumbling and it was time to head back to camp for brunch and a siesta.
My post-lunch nap on our verandah overlooking the river was disturbed by a persistent ‘barking’ noise. Initially mistaking the sound for a baboon, I looked up into the trees, before realising the noise was coming from a bushbuck just metres away. She was intensely curious about me, and kept up her one- sided ‘conversation’ with me, until I abandoned the verandah and headed out for a peaceful afternoon’s canoe trip.
Next stop on our trip was back to the Victoria Falls. At 1.7 kilometres wide and with up to 550 million litres of water a minute cascading up to 108 metres into the chasm below, during the peak flow, the Falls are truly a sight to behold. Wandering through the rainforest area of the Falls, amongst trees such as fig, mahogany and date palms, and dashing through the spray to see the Falls from some magnificent viewpoints, left me looking like a drowned rat.
