Fourth stop: Victoria Falls Part 1

After successfully crossing the borders of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, traversing the 70km long Chobe National Park and observing giraffes and elephants on the side of the road, we arrived in Victoria Falls after a very long day in the truck 🦒🐘 🇧🇼 🇿🇼 🇳🇦. Normally, when crossing the Chobe National Park, you can see numerous animals, but we only saw a few giraffes. The heavy rain was probably to blame. Nevertheless, it was impressive to see them standing at the roadside and gracefully crossing the road. Contrary to expectations, we didn't see any elephants, which is unusual for Lena, as you usually see numerous elephants there. Although we had already given up and no longer expected it, we finally saw three elephants relatively shortly before our arrival. We were all incredibly excited and I was very impressed by these huge animals.

Before driving to our campsite, we made a stop at a kind of travel agency to book our activities for the next two days. You probably all know my little difficulty in making decisions, so it was very difficult for me to choose from the wide range of options. Especially because the activities here are associated with a lot of money. In the end, I decided against any "adrenaline activities" like water rafting on the Zambezi, gorge swing, or bungee jumping, but instead for activities that I associate more with Africa and maybe can't do everywhere in the world. I chose "Elephant Encounter" and a "Lion Walk" 🦁🐘. More about that later 😊

Since we only have breakfast here in Vicfalls for the three days and it was already quite late, we quickly bought a pizza afterwards. When we walked to the campsite afterwards, our tents were already set up, luckily. However, getting the suitcase out of the truck and opening it was less pleasant. Half of my clothes were wet. The truck doesn't really withstand the heavy rain. I tried to hang up the wet clothes in the truck, but it didn't really work because they stay damp and musty. Well, I'll have to deal with it. At least the campsite has very nice showers, which I was really looking forward to after the long drive.

This morning at 6:15 am, we were supposed to be picked up for our first activity. Since we only booked late last night and apparently forgot to inform the driver, he arrived almost an hour late. Too bad for our sleep, but good because we were alone and the group we were supposed to do the tour with had already left. We drove for about 20 minutes to the Elephant Sanctuary. There, elephants live in a huge area who are injured, would be rejected, or for other reasons cannot live in the wild. However, when the elephants are ready, they can return to the wild at any time. However, some stay there for many years or forever. Our tour was sooo beautiful! We could see how the elephants live in their environment, we could "walk" with them, pet them, and feed them 😍 it was a really great experience and you really felt that the animals were well taken care of and really helped.

Now we are going straight to the Victoria Falls themselves, and tonight we are all going to have a traditional dinner together. I'll get back to you tomorrow and tell you how it was! Photos from today will follow, I still have to transfer them from the camera to my phone 😘