Days 89–91: After every LOW, there will be another HIGH

My first two rest days at the Victoria Falls were kind of wasted going to the doctor and resting my swollen feet. Having said that, chilling by the Waterfront pool bar with my laptop was not necessarily the worst spot to recover. While I had planned to update my blog, different riders kept coming by throughout the day, and so I ended up spending more time chatting than working.

I got a bit depressed listening to all the activities others had been up to, while I was just sitting around trying to recover. However, day three made up for my two lazy days big time. I was lucky that E.A., who had gone to Johannesburg for a week, only returned in the afternoon of day two. So I could team up with her to visit the falls.

E.A. suggested to go for a helicopter flight early morning, and I was all too happy to tag along. At the helicopter registration counter, E.A. proposed that we should go for a Microlight flight instead, as other riders had highly recommended it. So we made that decision within a few seconds, and luckily the flight operator allowed us to change. That Microlight flight was one of the absolutely coolest things I’d ever done, and I will feel forever grateful to E.A. for suggesting it.

From the sky, I could pretty much see everything from both the Zambia and Zimbabwean sides of the falls, so I no longer felt that I was missing out on anything. Feeling the air and the force of the falls from the sky was an experience like no other. Absolutely highly recommendable—put this onto your bucket list! Other then the falls, the pilots also pointed out elephants in the adjacent Victoria Falls Park, hippos in the Zambezi river and lots of birds/storks with their nests on top of the trees.

After the flight, we went to the Victoria Falls Park on the Zambian side to see the falls closer up. The views were absolutely magnificent, all the way from upstream right at the drop . . .

. . . via right in front . . .

. . . to down at the devil’s pond with view of the Victoria Falls bridge.

I walked through the part of the park where the force of the falls is so strong that everyone gets soaking wet like in a heavy rain shower.

Due to the sun and mist, there are lots of rainbows visible while walking through the park.

The vegetation is absolutely stunning and unique, changing from a dryer kind of bush forrest at the top of the falls to a proper rainforest at the bottom.

Our great morning ended with fantastic lunch at Ocean Basket. We stuffed ourselves with seafood, so much so that we all thought we could not possibly eat any more that day . .  .

. . . until I found strawberry juice at SPAR, that looked like straight out of an Austrian supermarket, hence I couldn’t resit . . .

. . . and until I walked past the Dacanton ice cream parlor 🙂

Finally, I needed a double espresso from Kubu Cafe, the best coffee shop in town, to facilitate my digestion.

What a great day! Now I no longer feel that I was missing out on anything. I had a truly amazing rest day. Sometimes, less is more.

Finally, a note on our campsite. While it’s definitely been one of our nicest camps on this tour, it’s also been one of our scariest. There were monkeys everywhere, and they were not only cheeky but outright viscous.

After my doctor’s visit, I was chilling by the pool in the garden, my bag of newly bought snacks next to me on the ground. While my attention was focused on my laptop screen, a monkey stole my bag. Stupid as those monkeys are, they ran off with the bag, but dropped all the snacks along the way. So I got up to collect them. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by ten angry and hungry monkeys, all of them showing me their teeth—they weren’t smiling!

I got so scared that I threw my snacks at them in all directions. They ran off, but for the biggest monkey. That beast kept baring its teeth at me. I was still holding my phone, and got keenly aware that monkeys are attracted to shiny objects. Without thinking, I threw my phone away. Luckily, as soon as my hands were empty, that monkey lost interest, both in me and my phone.

I went back to my chair to collect me stuff, no longer keen to stay in the garden. Some girls from an overland tour had been watching the scene. “Are these monkey bites?” they asked in shock, pointing at my open infected sores at my ankles. I hadn’t laughed as much in days!