Day 15 – Johannesburg to Victoria Falls to Chobe

The 5:00 wake up call came mighty early! I was all ready to go on another game drive when I realized that I was in Joburg and headed to Zimbabwe. It was up, repack the suitcases and head to the lobby to be met by the Thompsons guy. Luckily, the hotel lobby had tea and coffee all set to go. We made it to the airport in about a half hour, so were there two hours before our flight… plenty of time to check in and drop off our luggage.

The mistake we made was that we also had that much time to shop and the airport had turned into a shopping mall on the other side of passport control. I couldn’t dodge that bullet as Susan is always on the prowl for curios and artifacts. She is determine to turn our Sunriver home into an African safari lodge with all the paraphernalia she has accumulated on this trip! The stores were well stocked and very reasonably priced. Greg even bought a new camera to replace his old one that died on him. He bought a nice Canon 12.1 MP camera with lots of great features for the same price you could get in at Target in the US.

Our flight was about 1 ½ hours to Victoria Falls. The airport was rather small, smaller than Nelspruit, but crammed with people. There were native tribesmen singing traditional songs in their traditional costumes outside the airport as we left the airport and boarded the now familiar Thompson van. Our driver drove us straight to the border with Botswana, filled out our passport papers and had us enter the passport control line for the quickest border crossing I’ve done since the advent of the EU.

Just about 3o miles down the road was Katune, Botswana and beyond that was the Chobe Safari Lodge, our destination. It was located along the Chobe River and literally adjacent to the Chobe National Park. It was a beautiful place with thatched roofs and restaurants, swimming pools, and everything else you would want. The rest of the day was relaxing as we set about trying to catch up on sleep. Naturally, Susan wanted to go curio shopping, so we went into town for that endeavor.

The buffet dinners and breakfasts were included in our room charge, so we were just like swine at the trough… eating all kinds of new and wonderful delicacies from Kudu Curry to Tandoori Impala and everything in between. The next morning we had another early morning game drive, so it was off to bed early that night.