I woke up at 4:30 because I was so excited. I felt like a kid on Christmas. I got out of bed at 6 so I could have some coffee before we got picked up at 6:45 for our pick-up to go on our elephant safari. A van with lots of other tourists took us to the national park about 10 kilometers away from Victoria Falls. We had some coffee, heard the stories about the elephants, and then got to meet them. I think there were nine elephants. Three of them were young ones, which are just ridiculously cute. The stories about the elephants were cute. An orphan wandered into the park one day and one of the females adopted it. Another female ran away with some wild elephants but came back a year later by her own choosing. She was pregnant, so now she lives there with her little baby. Normally they put two people on an elephant with the guide, but our group was smaller so we all got our own. I was with Denny (elephant) and Elia (guide). We walked around the park for about an hour, at one point stopping to take pictures of the lion cubs that were there for another tourist group. We didn’t choose to do that, but it sounded cool. You get to walk with them, pet them, and feed them. The elephants took us through part of the Zambezi River, which is gorgeous. It’s huge and wide with tons of green vegetation all around it. We could even see the spray from the falls. We didn’t see any crocodiles or giraffes, unfortunately. At the end of the ride, we were able to sit on the elephant’s leg and feed them. I stuck my hand in the elephant’s mouth which was pretty awesome. Afterwards, we had more coffee and watched the video of our trip. It was a nice video, but we didn’t get one. We felt that the video of us swinging around the gorge was enough. We had a good time chatting with the other tourists – some people from America, England, and Switzerland.
Then we spent several glorious hours lounging by the pool until our pickup for the sunset cruise at 4. On the cruise we found a British couple that we had met on the elephant rides. They were very interesting to talk to because they’ve been all over the world. The cruise was so beautiful. It took us upstream on the Zambezi River away from the falls. We could still see the spray coming up from the falls even though we were quite a distance away. We saw some hippos bobbing in and out of the water and a warthog, but unfortunately no giraffes or anything like that. We had drinks, snacks, and dinner and then watched the very quick, gorgeous sunset. Because we’re so close to the equator, dawn and dusk are extremely short. We had a great time, but came back to some slightly disappointing news (at first). We’re staying in a hostel, but it hasn’t been busy at all, so our room of four beds has just been occupied with the two of us. We were informed that a man checked in and was staying with us. Thankfully, he is quite normal and this should be a good situation. He’s twenty-one, from New Zealand, and is heading to Lusaka to do several weeks of medical work. He and I both want to return to Victoria Falls to bungee jump, but the high cost and the fact you need your passport (mine is in Lusaka) is preventing me from doing that. We’ll see if he goes through with it.
Another amazing day in Livingstone. Not quite the same thrill as yesterday, but very enjoyable nonetheless. Tomorrow’s plans are still up in the air – we might return to the falls, tour the Livingstone museum, take a look at the curios, or do a little of all three.
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