The Zambezi river makes up the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, and it’s the Zambezi that is pouring over Victoria Falls. The two countries are connected by the beautiful Victoria Falls bridge, which towers over the gorge the Zambezi has carved. You can walk across this bridge between the two countries, and it’s my favorite border crossing ever.

As our last post mentioned, you can walk to the Zimbabwe side of the falls from the town of Victoria Falls. The falls being on the border, this naturally means you can walk to the border from town. So early the next morning, we mounted Franz and Helga on our backs and started making the short walk to the border.

It’s a very short walk to the border, and the entrance to the Zambia side of Victoria Falls is just on the other side of the bridge. So, a very reasonable thing to do is to stay in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, walk to visit the Zimbabwe side (like we did), and also walk to visit the Zambia side. You could even do them both in the same day, if you were so inclined. We totally should have stayed in Victoria Falls one more day and visited the Zambia falls in this way, instead of getting back down to the falls from the town of Livingstone, as we later would.

As we were nearing the border, I noticed a car pass us, slow down and stop a hundred meters or so in front of us, and a man got out. He stood there, looking in our direction, and as we got closer we realized: it was Frank! Our driver to Hwange from the day before. He noticed us walking (we’re quite noticeable, really) and stopped to let us know it would indeed be him driving us to our safari the next day. Wonderful! He said he was just then taking a car across the border to leave it in Zambia, to make it easier to pick us up in the morning. Apparently, getting a car over the border is time consuming, so getting that out of the way now would make things much easier for him in the morning.

Lookout Cafe

We told Frank we’d see him tomorrow, and continued our walk. Not much further, though, as we had a plan to break up the walk a bit: lunch at Lookout Cafe again! We had a lovely lunch out in the sunshine, letting Franz and Helga relax and tan themselves while we took in the views again.

To The Border

After lunch, we headed back out for our border run. Shortly, we passed the entrance to the park, with all the vendors out front. Just past this was the immigration check-point to leave Zimbabwe. We were stamped out, and released into the no-mans-land between the two countries.

As soon as we got through immigration, and started nearing the bridge, we were approached by taxi drivers, offering rides to the other side of the bridge.

“No thanks, we’re excited to walk the bridge!” we said.

“Oh noooo, it’s so far! And so much spray, you’ll get very wet!” They lied, neither of those things is true. There was some spray from the falls right at the start, and we stopped to put our bag covers on. But even that wasn’t terribly necessary, as we quickly passed the area of the spray.

Once you actually get onto the bridge, it’s an absolute treat. The views up and down the gorge are stunning, giving you a partial view of a piece of the falls. A popular activity here is bungee jumping off the bridge, and on the bridge you pass close to the area where people are doing just that. We were offered jumps and very much declined.

Halfway across the bridge, you arrive in Zambia!

Into the Twelfth Country of our Trip!

From the sign, it’s still a 10-minute or so walk to the Zambia border post. Along the way, we were befriended by a guy who wanted to offer us a taxi for when we got to the other side of the bridge. We were staying in Livingstone, which is about 10 kilometers from the border, so we were definitely planning to get a taxi. He probably overcharged us, but not so much that we felt bad about it, plus we now had that decision taken care of.

Entering Zambia was a breeze, on account of our KAZA visas we got back in Harare. We got stamped in, found our taxi, and were off to our hotel in Livingstone!

What’s Next?

From our new base in Livingstone, it’s time to basically repeat our time in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. We start the next day with another day-trip safari, this time in Chobe National Park in Botswana!