Monday September 15th - Travel to Zimbabwe

Last night we had a critter in our tent - a mouse found his way in and got into a bag of cashews… I kept hearing a crinkling sound and every time I sat up it stopped… this went on for quite awhile, then I got the flashlight out… still nothing… finally I saw the little guy hiding behind the emergency horn… probably not a good idea to sound the horn for a little mouse, so instead I woke up Cheryl.  :^)  We ended up putting the nuts in the garbage and left the little guy alone.

Up early at 5:30am for a long game drive through the reserve on the way to the airport. We wanted to ask our guide to drive by the baby elephant, but we were afraid of what we would see. We said nothing and our guide took us off in a different direction.  After 30 minutes or so, he looked back at us and said a leopard and baby have been spotted by the “baby elephant” did we want to go see it… gulp… we knew what we were going to see if we said yes, but we said yes.

As we expected the baby elephant did not make it and the elephant herd had left the sight.  Now the leopard and her cub were feeding off the baby elephant.  This is truly the circle of life.  We were routing for the little elephant and were VERY sad he didn’t make it, but we were happy to see a cub feeding and something good to come from something so very sad.

The mama leopard is protecting the kill (hiding it from other predators)

There has been a huge fire happening in Chobe while we were here, it actually started in Zimbabwe and crossed over to Bostwana.  It is too hot for them to fight the fire during the day so all they can do is watch it, then they build fire breaks at night.

Our safari guide dropped us off at the Kasane Airport where another driver picked us up to take us across the Bostwana - Zimbabwe border.  Our first stop was Botswana boarder control… well this was interesting… our driver tells us “go into that building and I’ll wait here”.  Once inside the building we found the most friendly people… NOT!  OMG these people were scary.  Next stop was the Zimbabwe border and buying our Visa to entry the country… Once again we go into a very small building and get in line.  Wish we could have taken pictures, but we were warned “NO picture taking”!  the most nerving part was after they gave us a voucher for the visa - they took our passports and told us to wait outside. What an experience crossing the border of African countries on foot… happily next time will be at an airport.

This afternoon we arrived at the A'Zambezi River Lodge in Victoria Falls where we will spend 2 days before heading home.  In the evening we went out on a sunset river cruise... nice relaxing evening.  We attempted a selfie... clearly we both thought we were the one snapping the picture...  :^)

...and we saw a million of these little cuties throughout the trip

Fun Facts:

• Zimbabwe currency is the US dollar