Frank was there, at the Victoria Falls Rest Camp, bright and early at 7am to pick us up for our day-trip to Hwange. The only problem with that was we’d been told by the tour company that pick-up was at 7:30, leaving Frank standing around in the cold for half an hour. Not to worry, Frank waved off our apologies, welcomed us warmly, and we were off for the more than an hour drive to Hwange National Park. Frank said…
After a great couple days in Harare, John and I flew into Victoria Falls, the town right next to the namesake falls on the Zimbabwe side. From the air we could see the spray of the falls, and were eager to see them the next day. We settled into our lodge at the Victoria Falls Rest Camp, which was spacious–cavernous even–though uninspiring. The walls were cinder block, the kitchen table something out of a kindergarten classroom. But, the bed was…
Like Johannesburg, Zimbabwe was a place we had no intention of visiting before this trip. In Zimbabwe’s case, it was on account of the political unrest there. However, shortly before we left for Phase 2 of the trip, Erika’s sister’s father-in-law (“I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate”) went to Harare for a few months of work, and was going to be there when we’d be in southern Africa. So, suddenly, we had something of a reason to…
We had no intention of going to Johannesburg. On top of being “just another big city,” we both independently felt like it was one of the more dangerous places we considered going. South Africa in general, to put it lightly, has some issues with crime. “Oh, it’d be the greatest country in the world if it weren’t for all the crime,” a South African we met in Istanbul airport, months later, said to us. He may not be a wrong…
Since we started planning this journey, Cape Town was one of the places we very much wanted to go. But by the time the trip started back in January, visiting Cape Town was looking fairly dicey. They were in the middle of an epic two-year-plus drought, water restrictions were in place, and there was talk of the city completely running out of water by April. Fortunately, enough rains had come and pushed that zero-day date out to 2019 at least,…
