Chobe and Victoria Falls

Okay, okay. I owe you a whirlwind tour of my past month in Botswana.

A few weekends ago, Sarah and I finally made our way up to Kasane in northern Botswana, where we stayed for two nights to explore the Chobe River on a boat cruise, jump across the border to see Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, and go on a morning game drive in Chobe National Park. Of course with our travel luck, that didn't quite happen. Sarah's chronic malarialesque-abdomino-itis-immunodecificency was acting up on the plane, causing her to accidentally drop her passport. The passport continued its comfortable Air Botswana journey on to Lusaka, Zambia, where, by nothing short of a miracle, it was actually recovered and sent back to Gabs. After speaking to approximately 73 Air Botswana representatives in every country in Southern Africa, Sarah managed to convince them to hand it over to Ryan Davis in Gabs.

In Kasane, the troubleshooting adventure was just beginning! We continued our epic tour de Botswana police stations and immigration offices to see if Sarah could still cross into Zimbabwe for an afternoon to see Vic Falls. This usually meant Sarah and one of our hotel managers would disappear into an official-looking back room somewhere while I stayed in the lobby listening to police chiefs try to bait me with terrifying stories of riverboat robberies.

Sarah managed to get a print-out copy of her passport "certified", meaning a police official stamped every sheet with the word "certified". Somehow, Botswana considers this process to legitimize just about anything. Nevermind the fact that they never actually saw a real copy of Sarah's passport or other form of identification. Unfortunately, the Kasane immigration office (pic below) said, "You will have no trouble going, but you will have trouble coming back." For some reason I will never understand, Sarah's first reaction was, "That sounds like an adventure." Ultimately though, I went to Victoria Falls alone while Sarah unsuccessfuly attempted to shop at the one store in Kasane. Pobrecita.

I ended up on a private tour of Victoria Falls in which my guide Stan drove us 2 hrs each way across the border to the falls. Check out my private 15-seater van pictured below. I learned a lot about Stan, particularly about his GERD. He had always thought was a milk allergy, but I explained to the best of my abilities why his diet and lifestyle might be contributing to his GERD. I heard most of Stan's life story over lunch on the curb outside the grocery store. When he had asked where I wanted to go for lunch in Victoria Falls, suggesting the fancy restaurant at The Kingdom hotel, I replied that I'd rather eat something "really cheap and local," thinking maybe he'd know of a great corner lunch booth or something. Nope, we ate at the grocery store, but he was right that it was cheap. I let go of the whole "GERD" thing when Stan ordered chili beef with chili sauce.

Victoria Falls was pretty incredible, but to be honest, I think if you've seen one waterfall, you've kind of seen them all. I did not find this wonder of the world to be any more impressive than Niagara Falls, except for the fact that there were monkeys everywhere and no restrictions about how close you can get to the edge of the terrifyingly slippery cliff. In fact, the path along the Zimbabwean side of the falls takes you to "Danger Point," where jumping from rock to slippery rock to get a better view of your possible death is encouraged. As you near Danger Point, you also get completely soaked from all the mist, which was pretty awesome. I had all my belongings double-wrapped in plastic bags in anticipation of this.

My strategy on this solo adventure was to offer to take as many family photos of Zimbabwean families as I could so that they'd offer to take pictures of me. This had interesting results, because instead of a family member simply taking a picture of me with the waterfall, it was assumed I'd rather have a husband or teenage son in the photo with me with our arms around each other. I now have a collection of photos of me, a random Zimbabwean dude, and Victoria Falls.

If Sarah's travel luck were not already bad enough, our game drive the next morning forgot about us. We waited at our hotel gate at 5:30am in the dark, but no one showed. After many phone calls and poor Sarah thinking she'd flown across the country for only a 3 hr boat cruise and a lot of cat naps in a mosquito net, we finally found a company who was willing to give us a private game drive in the nick of time to catch our flight home. The drive through Chobe was incredible. I'll put some pictures from the game drive and sunset river cruise in the next post, but here's a preview.

Ultimately, Sarah made it onto the plane back to Gabs with a police statement and a certified photocopy of her passport, but without an actual passport. That's definitely its own kind of Bots success if you ask me.