Day 14 – Victoria Falls – davstuholidays

Today we have a bit of a free day which we are making the most of. All of the others have gone down to Chobe National Park for the day, however we aren’t doing the day version we are going down there for three days after this tour so this has given us a free day in our itinerary.

We decided we would book an AM game drive which started at 6 am this morning. I know, another early start, but it has been worth it. We were picked up by Dale and Tam this morning. Tam was the game driver/guide and Dale is studying to become a game driver. Dale is able to do his exams now but has decided to get more experience and sit them in February next year.

We were taken to the park ranger station which is about 10 minutes outside of town and is where Victoria Falls National Park’s main entry is. This part of the park is known as Part A and only has natural water sources which are dry at the moment as they had a terrible rainy season which finished in February instead of April as it normally would.

While we were waiting for Tam to register us (again waivers in case of death by predator) with the park a troupe of Baboons walked across the car park. Dale explained they like the fruit in the trees that grow between the ranger station and the Zambezi.

We then headed to what we later learned was Part B (Dale did mention the name of the gate we went to but I didn’t write it down) which has some pumping stations which use bore water to keep water in some of the dams in that side of the park.

We learnt that the Victoria Falls National Park is not fenced (the same as Kruger wasn’t) so animals are free to migrate with the park effectively part of other national parks running through Zambia, Botswana and Namibia.

We started the morning’s sightings with Warthogs, then Giraffes, then Zebra and Baboons.

As we were driving to a watering hole to see Kudu and Buffalo, Tam says quite casually, Hyena.

Hyena’s live in dens and normally once the sun is up they go back to it and this is even more true when they have cubs. These dens are underground. We saw a mother hyena and her cubs just lying there sleeping in the sun without a care in the world.

The mother didn’t even stir the both times our vehicle pulled up next to her cubs. This means we have now seen the Ugly 5 and the Big 5. The ugly 5 are the Warthog, the Wildebeest, the Marabou Stork, the Vulture and the Hyena.

We had a coffee watching the Buffalo wallowing in the water, Tam explained that when a heard is all male these have been ejected from the heard by younger males, the older males then mill together to form a heard and are the most dangerous of the Buffalo as they are angry all the time.

After our coffee we headed home and saw an elephant off in the distance and a tower of Giraffe (a group of Giraffes standing still which become a journey when they move. There were about 5 babies with this family group.

The rest of the day has been taken up with shopping in the small curio markets and having people trying to sell us everything and anything as we walk up the street. We even came across a pregnant Warthog in a little park on the main road.