The Plein Travelers

Hi, we're Amber and Nate. Join us on our 2024 trip around the world!

Last Stops in Southern Africa: Victoria Falls and Chobe National Park

After three days at Etosha National Park, we drove back to Windhoek for one night before flying out to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe the next morning. We stayed at a simple guest house and had our last meal in Namibia at a cute local spot called The Wine Bar. I had a delicious oxtail stew and Nate got a noodle dish and a glass of red wine.

Victoria Falls, the Town

The next morning, we headed to the airport and waited in an airport lounge (Priority Pass has come in so handy this trip – highly recommend for international travel) until we boarded our short flight.  Everything went smoothly at the Victoria Falls airport and we were soon on our way to Pennywise Cottages, where we would be spending two nights. It was early afternoon by the time we got to the hotel. Since it only takes one day to visit the falls, we decided to spend the day as a rest day

Arriving at Victoria Falls Airport

I accidentally broke my sunglasses the night before in Windhoek so we walked through town looking for sunglasses in the afternoon. There was no sunglasses store, so I rummaged through half a dozen tourist stores before choosing a cheap pair that would have to do. We then walked to the park entrance to see what it was like.

That afternoon stroll was probably the most mentally exhausting walk of the trip. I don’t think we’ve ever been anywhere where vendors hawk and follow tourists as much as in Victoria Falls. And we’ve experienced a lot. There were people lined up along the street waiting to approach us, trying to sell old billion plus dollar Zimbabwe currency or trinkets. They are all very nice, but even after you say “no” multiple times, they continue to follow you. I think the record was one man that followed us for over a kilometer before giving up. By the Falls entrance, there are shops lining the street and the shopkeepers come and introduce themselves, try to make conversation, and keep asking you to come take a look. After a while, it gets exhausting, and you start mentally bracing when you see the next person. We know being approached is common as a tourist, but they are so tenacious at Victoria Falls!

Once we wrangled our way past all the street hawkers, we went to dinner at a restaurant called Zulu Bistro which serves local cuisine. I had a spicy peanut butter chicken dish and Nate got a goat curry. The food was very good and I was happy because it had been surprisingly difficult to eat local cuisines throughout Africa as a tourist. Accommodations and restaurants generally have international foods. Of course, you can always leave the tourist areas to have more local foods, but that is a separate challenge to navigate properly so we did not do that.

Overall, we can both definitively say that Victoria Falls as a town is at the bottom of the list for us. There is not much to see or do in the town of Victoria Falls itself. It was much less developed and built out than we thought it would be with only a small strip of restaurants and tourist shops that are all quite expensive. That on top of the relentless hawking did not make hanging out in town a pleasant experience. So, after dinner, we went straight back to our hotel for some peace and quiet before the big day.

Visiting the Famous Victoria Falls

We started our trek to the Zimbabwe side of Victoria Falls early in the morning, again walking through the endless peddlers. About halfway there, we came across an elephant grazing on trees by the main road! The locals were waving and yelling to warn us and guided us to cross the street to move away. It was clear that they were all afraid. This elephant seemed more agitated than the elephants we saw close-up on the safaris. We gave the elephant plenty of space and walked around him to get back on the path. A local walked with us and told us that we need to be very careful if we see any wildlife as they are wild animals. He told us that an elephant had killed someone just three months ago in town. A reminder of the power and strength of these majestic creatures.

We eventually got to the park entrance and paid the expensive $50 per person entrance fee. You cannot see the falls without entering the park. The Zimbabwe side encompasses the majority of the falls so you can see more of the falls from Zimbabwe. We went to each lookout point to view the falls. June is the wet season so the falls were roaring with so much water. The volume of water was incredible and the mist sprayed everywhere, often also clouding our view of the falls. It was good that we heeded advice online and wore our rain jackets because we got drenched. The falls were very cool to see. But honestly, as we had both been to Niagara Falls, we didn’t think that Victoria Falls was anything uniquely spectacular. Perhaps if we went in a drier season, the views would have been better. If you’ve seen Niagara Falls, we don’t think it’s worth making a trip specifically to see Victoria Falls. We spent in total about 2.5 hours walking around before we exited for lunch.

We went to Lookout Café for lunch. As we read online, it was a very nice restaurant with great views. We luckily got there around 11 before the lunch rush and were able to nab one of the last remaining unreserved tables. Being hungry, we both ordered burgers (unfortunately not very good) and a smoothie (delicious). We had a leisurely lunch admiring the view.

Rested and refueled, we headed towards the border to walk over the bridge and visit the Zambian side. It was my first time walking across country borders and I wasn’t sure quite what to expect, but it was surprisingly easy and almost lax. We first went through the Zimbabwe post to get an exit stamp then walked for a while to get to the border bridge. On the other side, we got a Zambia entrance stamp and that was it. What surprised me was how many locals, both Zimbabwean and Zambian, seemed to be just hanging out in the in-between border area and trying to sell goods to tourists.

It was a bit of a walk, but we finally entered the Zambian Park (entry fee of $20). Other guests at our South African safari lodge told us that the Zambian side was both cheaper and better and they were right. You can get closer to the falls on the Zambia side. Closer up, we could feel the raw power of the falls which filled us with awe and excitement. The falls were thunderous, and we got drenched in the spray. Even though we couldn’t see as many falls, we thought the views were better too. We even saw a double rainbow forming over the pedestrian bridge and it felt like we were walking through the rainbows. You can also to the top of the falls. It is an amazing contrast to see how relatively normal the river is while knowing the massive fall it turns into as soon as the water falls over the edge. We tried to walk down to an area called the Boiling Pot where water swirls, but when we got three-quarters of the way down, we ran into a large, agitated group of baboons that were shrieking and running around. It was scary so I decided it was not worth venturing further and we came back up. I do not mess with baboons.

After a couple hours in the Zambian park, we walked back across the border bridge into Zimbabwe. By this point, we had been standing and walking for over eight hours and I was exhausted. The thought of another 40-min walk back and facing all the street hawkers was too much, so we took a taxi back to the hotel. It was maybe the best $5 spent in Victoria Falls.

As mentioned earlier, we don’t think that it’s worth going out of the way to visit Victoria Falls. However, if you’re in the region, it can be worth checking out. If you go, we highly recommend the Zambian side over the Zimbabwe side. We don’t think the Zimbabwe side is particularly worth it.

Chobe National Park in Botswana

We organized a transfer from Victoria Falls to our lodge in Kasane, Botswana the next day. Our driver picked us up and drove us to the Zimbabwe-Botswana border where the driver from our Kasane lodge picked us up and took us to Elephant Trail Lodge where we would be staying for two nights. The whole journey took about an hour and a half. We arrived in time to embark on our first afternoon Chobe River cruise. We were very excited for Chobe National Park because multiple people we met traveling in South Africa and Namibia spoke so highly of Chobe and the density of wildlife there. We also hadn’t properly seen a hippo yet and there were supposed to be plenty of them on the Chobe River.

Our boat was a small boat that sat low to the water and held about a dozen people. We had read and heard of enough hippo incidents, so we were a bit nervous, but the vast majority of the cruise boats were the same kind so we didn’t think too much of it. From 3 to 6pm, our guide took us down the Chobe River and we saw many crocodiles (they are pretty scary), buffalo, elephants, various birds, and hippos from afar. The highlight of this cruise was seeing a herd of elephants swim across the river! It was amazing to watch. I was surprised and nervous at how close some of the other boats were getting to the animals on shore including the crocodiles, but I didn’t see any animals getting angry, so I guess they are all used to the boats. The sunset on the Chobe River was beautiful and it was a great first day in Chobe. When we got back to the lodge, we ate the delicious dinner cooked by the lodge and we went to bed early.

We had a full day the next day where we did a 3-hour game drive in the park in the morning and another 3-hour afternoon river cruise. The morning game drive was a little disappointing as we didn’t see too many animals – we did see one female lion, but she was quite shy so we didn’t get any good pictures. And we had done a lot of game drives by this point, so we were less excited by the more common animals like antelopes. We were really hoping to finally see a leopard (we count the brief, hidden leopard sighting at nThambo as just as a half sighting), but we did not succeed. But that is the unpredictable nature of safaris so we couldn’t be too upset.

Our second afternoon river cruise was more exciting than the first. We saw more animals and to my delight we saw more hippos in closer distance! I was ecstatic because my main goal at Chobe was to see lots of hippos and we finally did. The day before, I could only see hippos in the distance with my binoculars. This afternoon, we got close enough (but not too close) to see them clearly with my eyes. They are such dangerous animals, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how cute and rubbery they looked. The other highlight was witnessing a crocodile take down a buffalo! Our guide had told us that though rare, crocodiles will sometimes kill a smaller buffalo. And then we saw it happen. The take down was happening underwater so we didn’t get more than a glimpse of the buffalo’s horns sticking out of the water a couple of times. But we did see the crocodile surface and dive repeatedly.

We were only in Chobe for two nights so unfortunately, that was all we had time to fit in. If we were to come back, I think we would want to spend more days at Chobe and do longer game drives. As we were leaving to head to the airport, a group returned from a 6-hour game drive and we heard that they had seen two (!) leopards. So hopefully, we can see leopards on our next visit to Chobe.

Which Safari Experience Comes Out on Top?

Having done safaris at Klaserie Reserve (outside Kruger), Etohsa, and Chobe, which one is the best? It is hard to compare because each place and experience was so different and as I’ve mentioned, it’s mostly luck what you see. But if I had to rank, I’d say my preferences in order are Etosha, Chobe, then Klaserie.

My personal favorite was Etosha because of all the watering holes where you could drive to and almost be guaranteed to see animals. By staying at a campsite inside the park, it was also a great perk to be able to sit by the Okaukuejo watering hole at night. I also really enjoyed self-driving and the freedom it brought, even though I did miss having a guide telling us interesting information. The landscape was also pleasant at Etosha, being greener with more variety than at Klaserie.

Number two is Chobe because despite our disappointing game drive, I could see and feel the amazing potential there. If we had stayed longer and done some more game drives, I think we would have seen some amazing things. The landscape was my favorite as it is the greenest and having the Chobe River for the river cruise is a great way to mix up the wildlife viewing experience.

We had some great animal sightings and encounters at Klaserie. But I still placed this at the bottom because it was hard to untangle Klaserie versus nThambo. nThambo was absolutely amazing from the lodge itself to staff, food, and the private game drive experience. But we did not stay in comparable nice accommodation at Etosha or Chobe. So when just thinking about the Klaserie reserve itself, it wasn’t as dense with wildlife as the other two and the bush landscape is drier and more yellow. If we were to go back, we’d want to stay in Kruger National Park and do the self-drives.

Now off to Mauritius for our rest week!


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4 responses to “Last Stops in Southern Africa: Victoria Falls and Chobe National Park”

  1. Sally Avatar
    Sally

    I can only imagine how stressful it must be to deal with those vendors all the time… And I am so glad you steered clear of those baboons too. That is so scary!

    I can’t wait to see your Mauritius blog post 🤓

  2. Susanna B Klavora Avatar
    Susanna B Klavora

    We totally feel we are there experiencing this fabulous experience with you. Thank you.

  3. Ann Klavora Avatar
    Ann Klavora

    ❤️❤️❤️

  4. Kim Avatar
    Kim

    What a fantastic month in Africa. Your blog makes me feel like I am riding along.

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