Walking with Rhinos

The overall plan for today was to fly from Victoria Falls to Kruger National Park. Simple right?
So there was a direct flight at 2pm from Livingstone, which is just across the border (Zambia) less than 20km away. Easy…!?!

So we had until 2pm to do the 20km to get to Livingstone airport. We didn’t want to see the Falls again and we hadn’t seen a rhino yet, so what to do? Obvious right?

So the day started with a sleep in and a leisurely breakfast in town. We are on holidays after all 🙂

Before taking a taxi to the Zimbabwe side of the border ($10). Then we walked across the border on the stunning but misty bridge from Zimbabwe into Zambia
(again this could have been $US100pp transfer, but if you travel light there is something pretty cool about physically walking between countries and being in “no mans land” in the middle)

I bought 50 billion Zimbabwean note from a trusty man mid-crossing in no mans land!!! (and a $10bn, $1bn and $50million). I just had too 🙂

I had arranged a service to pick us up at the Zambia side of the border and take us to the airport. When I messaged them the night before to see if they could also take us to walk with the Rhinos, they said “No problem!”. Besides if you look at the map at the top of this post, the Mosi-oa-tuni NP is on the way-ish right?

So DewClaw picked us up from the border crossing and took us on a game drive through Mosi-oa-tu ya National Park. Saw elephants, buffalo, impala, zebras, warthogs

..to see and walk with the white rhinos!
(interestingly, we were told that Zambia only has 10 white rhinos apparently and that these are 4 of them. So Zambia has them under armed guards for protection from poachers. Here we were thinking that we were the ones being protected…)

Morning tea-ish by the Zambesi River

A drive through Livingstone town to the airport.

It was super kind of the car service to throw in the game drive and morning tea by the Zambesi River 🙂

Next up was our flight (with a studding view of the falls)…
(the first photo shows the mist in the distance then the second is a little closer)

…to Kruger National Park airport, pick up hire car and drive

to our hotel. Arriving just as they closed the gates to Kruger National Park for the night 🙂 We had just made it in time thanks to Nathan’s amazing driving!
(nothing like a blackout over dinner – given all the scheduled power outages in Cape Town it wasn’t a surprise. We’re getting used to power and wifi being only intermittent)