Safari: Waterberry Highlights
On our first (and only) full day at Waterberry, we took the day trip to Victoria Falls. After breakfast, our guide for the day took us through Livingstone and on to the Zambia side of the Falls. He escorted us to the entrance, and took a minute to talk about the history of the falls and how the current falls are the fifth (?) falls throughout history as the river carves a new path. The he told us what to expect, mentioned with paths to take, and sent us on our way.
Along the path, we first found a statue of Livingstone overlooking the falls. We also had to keep an eye out for baboons on the way, but we weren’t carrying anything but our cameras, so they pretty much left us alone. (There was a warning in our room that asked ladies not to bring their purses because of the baboons!)
There wasn’t much of the falls to see from the Zambia side, since we were there during the dry season. Instead, there was a huge expanse of bare rock wall. We could only imagine what the falls would look like during the wet season. Reports are that you don’t actually see a lot during the wet season, because there is so much mist in the way.
We crossed the knife-edge bridge to get to the very end of the Zambia side of the falls – it was where we could get the best view from Zambia. Still very little of the falls were visible.
We trekked back to the entrance, spent a little time at the market there, but left quickly after we decided that dickering wasn’t our thing!
Our guide then took us to the Zambia side of the border crossing and gave us instructions on how to get to the Zimbabwe side, how to cross the border, and where to find him when we returned. We decided to walk, rather than take a cab across – it was only a mile or so. However, it was *hot*!
After paying our visitor visa, we found our way to the Victoria Falls park. There were lots of paths that we could have taken, but since I was in my orthopedic boot, we decided to take basically the shortest path that showed the most of the falls.
It was definitely worth the trip across the border, because we got to see actual water! From web searches, we determined that the water flow rate was about a third of Niagara, so we had certainly seen falls with more water. However, here, the falls are so much closer – they are essentially in a narrow canyon.
We popped into several observation spots to see the falls from as many vantage points as we could. At one point we even saw a group of people on the falls-side in Devil’s Hole – an experience to be right on the edge of the falls during the dry season. No thank you!
One thing that struck me was the barriers that they had erected on the edges of the path. In the US, we would have had concrete barriers with loads of signs and warnings. Here, there was just a bramble “fence”, and only at the places where the path led to the edge.
We finished and made our way back to our guide in Zambia (we used a cab to get across this time – much faster and less sweaty than walking). On our way back to the camp, we stopped and had a lunch that the camp folks had packed for us.
We had some time between returning to the camp and our planned sunset cruise in the evening. We sat on some chairs on the river bank (some distance from the river), and at one point spied some elephants across the river bathing.
We took another river cruise, this time one highlight came after sunset. Our guide found a troop of baboons who were getting themselves ready for the night. The leader scouts out a tree, generally close to water. Then the troop grabs a drink, cleans each other, and starts to make their way up the tree. We got to see all of this.
Before that, we also spied some zebra and a number of juvenile crocodiles. And for a while we followed a couple of water buck with their “friend” the cattle egret.
The next morning, we had one last experience at Waterberry before moving on to our next stop – we took a morning bird walk. I don’t remember many of the names or stories (not being a big birder), but we did enjoy the walk and seeing the birds.
