As I type I’m sitting in the Aspire Lounge at JNB – Johannesburg airport, in the international terminal, waiting to board our flight to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. We had a little scare when we got to check-in and realized my duffel bag was missing. Did I really leave it in the car? Did it fall off? Was that security guard who was being helpful really a distraction to steal something? All these thoughts raced through our heads as we made our way back to the rental car to discover an empty trunk. WTF? “Is everything OK?” we were asked. We announced the missing bag. “Is this it?” Somehow – early on – it had fallen off the trolley and we hadn’t noticed it. They picked it up and put it in this little rack at the intersection in the parking garage. Disaster averted.

We both slept 8 hours without interruption and woke up about 5:30am. I got the blog up over coffee in the room, we packed up and went over for breakfast around 7:30am.

They had a fresh waffle station that I had avoided all week but promised myself I would do on the last day. With Chantilly cream and strawberries! It was worth the wait. Ash ordered the smoked salmon scramble again.

And they presented us with a special chocolate mousse to kick off our handfasting anniversary. You can google all about it if you’re interested, but the version we are honoring each year is a simple commitment for “a year and a day” and we decided our tradition would be new rings and in a new location every year.

We left the hotel at 8:30am. It’s now approaching 10:30am and I’m sitting comfortably in the lounge while Ash gets some steps in. At this moment I was the only one there, and a few more came in later.

I wanted to capture a few thoughts about Johannesburg before too much more time passed.

1. I literally had zero expectations about this trip. People would say “you must be so excited” and I’d be like “yeah, sure” because while on some level I was, on other levels I really hadn’t put that much thought into it beyond what to pack. Managing expectations I think, which is my normal habit. So, my statement that I was blown away and expectations were far exceeded is based on that – I was imagining the worst and experienced everything but.
2. The Four Seasons is a world-class 5-star hotel. This was only my 2nd time experiencing that, my first being the Conrad in Istanbul in 2017. If you’ve never done it, I highly recommend it at least once. The quality of the accommodations and the level of service provided will blow your mind. And, in both cases, it was so much sweeter that the stays were done for essentially free. Our bill at the end of 4 nights here was about $300 – which included 3 high end meals, tips for breakfast otherwise included, and laundry service. Chase points to the rescue again! Otherwise, the retail on these rooms is like $800/night.
3. Ash had really downplayed Johannesburg, but I think even he enjoyed it more than his first time here. For a variety of reasons, it’s not first on traveler’s list when it comes to places to go – Cape Town has that reputation, which is where we will end the trip. But for folks like me for whom history is important, it was a great place to start. My experience here explained so much of what had always been confusing to me. (White people governing an African country? What?? How does that happen?) And the people here are So Nice. Everywhere We Went. Seriously. It exceeds our experience in Costa Rica where we experienced something similar, but this was even more than that. Perhaps it’s because freedoms were fought hard for and then the country redesigned to support those freedoms for Everyone ongoing. As an example – South Africa is the only country in Africa where same-sex marriages are legal. In fact, at our next stop in Zimbabwe homosexuality is illegal, with a penalty of 1-10 years imprisonment. Which is still better than other countries where the penalty is death. So, the feel to everything here in SA is, I imagine, entirely different than we would have anywhere else on the continent. No fear about being who we are. Which is sort of the definition of freedom, is it not? We don’t even get that everywhere in the USA.
4. The infrastructure was impressive in some ways and surprisingly lacking in others. Our cell phones connected right up when we landed and have worked everywhere without a problem except maybe some of the remote places we were yesterday. Yet there’s this very normal electric thing here called “load-shedding” – the practice of shutting electricity down in order to keep things from blowing. It happened at the restaurant last night and what was noticeable was how unnoticeable it was – no one gasped or even blink, it was a completely full restaurant, and everyone just kept talking like nothing was happening and then a few second later the lights came back on. This happens several times a day and no one thinks anything of it. There’s even a little card explaining it in the hotel; of course, the Four Seasons has generators that kick in right away, so the experience is even more mild there.

We had an 11:30am flight that was just about 100 minutes in the air, so were surprised that we were served little sandwiches as a snack. And good thing because that was all we had until dinner at 7pm. The plane landed on the tarmac, and we had a little walk to the airport.

Ash said this airport has expanded a lot since he was here the first time in 2015. It was just the portion on the rest, which is now just for domestic flights. We were headed to the far right.

Getting through Zimbabwe customs – for reasons mentioned above – was the thing about this trip I was most worried about. This is Ash celebrating us flying through without any problems.

[videopress UGu2c9DO]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a little video you don’t want to miss: Ash joining the little tribal dance that welcomed us as we were leaving the airport.

We met up with 4 others who will be on this safari with us who were on the same flight – two couples from the Houston area and seems like they will be fun. We were taken to our hotel about 20km away in this van.

This is where we are staying for tonight.

This is the main entrance. Love the thatch roof.

We are only here for one night and won’t have time to use the pool but it makes for a nice photo!

There are 2 rooms to each little building, at least in this row. Ash is about to enter ours. That’s Mike and Debbie from Houston, they are in the one next over. You will probably be seeing a lot of them and their friends, Jim and Sheryl.

Pretty nice. When we got back before dinner, they had put mosquito net up all around the bed.

You didn’t think we’d be camping, did you? Nice bathroom above and below.

On the drive over, one of the hotel workers in the van arranged for a helicopter ride over the falls for all 6 of us. We’d gotten to the lodge about 2:15 and were ready to go by 3. Note: this was completely spontaneous, Ash and I had never discussed doing this until it came up in the van ride. I’d never been in a helicopter before, but he did this one when he was here in 2015. (By the way – he says it has grown and improved significantly – the whole area that is, not the helicopter ride…)

This was the helicopter station. We had to get weighed and walked through some do’s and don’ts. And of course, pay. ($175/person if you’re curious. In Vegas or NYC these are like $400/$500 per.)

Ash and I got in this little one. The other 4 went in a bigger one. I sat in front!

Our first good approach of the falls. It’s breathtaking in a way that’s hard to describe.

[videopress M7134AVy]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can’t believe how well these videos turned out. I took them just with my iPhone. It doesn’t even look real. But we were there! (And I don’t know why WordPress forces all this white space after the video….)

OK so I culled a LOT of the photos and videos I took – although I still did a nice job of balancing capturing it with being present for it. It was a 15-minute ride and we made 3 maybe 4 loops so there were lots of opportunities for both. But I’m just going to post and let them speak for themselves. Words don’t work at times like these anyway.

[videopress nlsJI0ex]

Make note of that bridge you keep seeing. We walked it later in the afternoon.

[videopress NbhTsguB]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The workers at the station took this on my own phone as I was getting out; same with Ash. They’d taken a bunch of videos of us and had a whole presentation at the end – with stock footage of the falls in between – for just $40, but we declined. We didn’t even stay to watch it. We’d seen the one they showed the other 2 couples – who declined also – so knew what we were missing. And knew we had our own good photos and videos!

Ash had the driver pass up the turn to the hotel just to drop us closer to the bridge! We had to get a pass at customs to ensure we could return easy. Victoria Falls is created by the Zambezi River which divides Zimbabwe from Zambia.

It’s a take-all-comer bridge: pedestrians, vehicles, and trains. One of the few in the world.

If you look closely, you can see the double rainbow.

Midway through the bridge you are put on notice that you are entering Zambia. If you actually cross all the way you may have to pay for a Zimbabwe visa to get back in! (We had to pay $60 total at the airport…)

[videopress Cax4Veqb]

The opening is a little weird (I need to learn to crop video!) but if you hang in there you’ll see 3 rainbows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We crossed to the other side for a bit just to get the other view. The helicopter pilot said it’s their own little Grand Canyon, runs for 100s of miles.

As we walked back, we encountered some wild monkeys. The ones in the video below are adorable.

[videopress bc2qmXyk]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, we saw this AFTER taking the video of the monkeys :) At any rate, when the National Geographic leader – Gail – said the hotel wanted us to take a cab to dinner because it will be dark and there could be animals out, we heeded that message. “When people ask, ‘do elephants really walk down the street in Africa?’, HERE the answer is ‘yes, yes they do.'”

We got back to our room around 5:30pm, just enough time for both of us to shower and meet Gail and the rest of the tour group at 6pm. We had a briefing until 6:30pm then ordered some things from some local vendors which we’ll talk about when we get them. For your purposes, the most important thing we learned is that we should have some Wi-Fi access for the first 6 days or so of the trip, but for the 3 days we are in the Okavango Delta towards the end we won’t have any.

We had made dinner reservations at the Victoria Falls hotel because it had nice ratings on TripAdvisor. We figured we’d be spending lots of time with our tour group and wanted to have a final night to ourselves.

The restaurant was called Stanley’s Terrace so of course we were outside. We could hear the falls from here but of course it was too dark to see anything.

We started with several different kinds of breads and spreads. We agreed the hummus on the far right was our favorite, although the green one next to it was a close 2nd for me.

I had a chilled avocado soup with garlic and cream. It was terrific.

Ash had a salmon teriyaki salad which he said was incredible.

It was a beautiful hotel – this was from the back yard which butt up against the Falls.

Ash had a white fish he’d never had before – we don’t recall the name – which he said was good but not great. The vegetables were excellent though.

I had steak again which was great, and the baked potato that was sliced thin and crispy on the outside was amazing.

We had a lovely conversation reviewing the last year – what we liked, what we would change; and about the year coming up.

And renewed our commitment for another year and a day, and exchanged new rings shown above. Note: this has nothing to do with our legal marriage, it’s just something we want to build a tradition around. We’ll see where we end up for it next year!

We shared a simple dessert of a brownie with candied cashews and vanilla ice cream. A classic ending to an incredible day.

We got back to our room around 9pm and I decided to post the blog tonight. We have an early start tomorrow and I may not have any other time. Gail said to expect early and full days so my writing may get a little sketchy from here on out. We’ll just see how it all goes.

But you have to admit, this one was amazing, right? This is why we travel.