Elephant Camp - Victoria Falls

Elephant Camp in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe was our last stop on this amazing adventure of eastern Zimbabwe. It was also where we did the most variety of activities and had the most luxurious accommodations. In an attempt to cover most of what we did, the video, click here, is the longest in the series.

View of Victoria Falls from Elephant Camp

We arrived by caravan plane on day 12 (April 13). The caravan plane arrived at Robins Airstrip with 2 passengers and gathered the three of us and the family from the other lodge that we had run into while out on safari. The flight was a quick 15 minutes and would have been 3 hours by drive.

We were picked up at the Victoria (Vic) Falls airport and driven to Elephant Camp a short distance away. You can see the Falls from Elephant Camp. Carol, Camp/Lodge Manager, fooled us into believing that the mist coming from the Falls was in fact smoke from wildfires. We actually believed her for a bit.  She wasn't the only Zimbabwean that tried to practical joke us. I promised her we would get even. 😊 It is also true that the local name for the Falls is Mosi-oa-Tunya, "Thundering Smoke."

Susan immediately had a massage after our orientation.

Continuing the tradition of sundowners, we had a short safari drive with our guide, Wonder, to the Zambezi River Gorge. We did see lots of animals along a small waterway including a troop of baboons playing in a tree.

After being cloudy all day, the sun came out for sundown and lit up the gorge in spectacular fashion.

The foursome at the very misty Falls

On Sunday Wonder took us to tour the Falls. Because of the pour rainy season, the Falls are only at about 50% volume. When you see the photos, note that there would normally be 50% more water flowing over the Falls! Also, to be honest, since the Falls are so enormous, stretch out for almost a mile, and create their own micro-climate of tropical forest; the impact is muted.

There are constant helicopter tours where I'm sure you get the full impact. But the constant helicopters are a noisy annoyance when viewing the Falls from afar.

Wonder told Pam and I the story of how he got his name. It is a beautiful, sad, and inspiring story and meant so much that he shared this with us.

From the Falls we went across the street to the appropriately named Lookout Cafe and a canopy zipline tour. Susan opted not to do the zipline. The zipline is in a very lush gorge downstream from the Falls. Our guides were Joe and Gift. The zipline consisted of several lines between the two sides of the gorge. The climb out was on the strenuous side. We rejoined Susan for a lovely lunch at the Lookout Cafe.

We must have gone back to Camp/Lodge though my notes do not indicate that.

Wonder took us on an afternoon safari drive into Zambezi National Park. We saw a very large herd of elephants that were right among us along the drive. Since this national park is close to the town and to Zambia, we crossed paths with more people than the previous three places combined. We did learn that there was a large herd of Cape Buffalo at the opposite end of the park, and we convinced Wonder to take us all the way.

Zambezi National Park is where the elephant and giraffe at the watering hole video clip was taken. I consider this one of the highlights of our safari drives. We saw lots of animals on this evening drive and had another situation where we kept our guide in a national park after hours.

The Bridge

Day 14, April 15, was another full day. George took us shopping in town and for a walk across the Victoria Falls Bridge. The bridge is 100 years old, and some really big trucks drive over it...thankfully, one at a time. One can bungee jump from the bridge but surprisingly none of us did that.

We went back to Elephant Camp where I told Carol, the manager, that we were not able to walk the bridge because structural faults were found. She took the bait for a bit then realized I had gotten her back for her practical joke. 😊

That afternoon Susan, Marlin, and Jeff took in the Elephant Experience. There was a short safari drive to find the elephants. You got to "pet" them and to Marlin and Susan's absolute delight, feed them. You do get a real sense of how big these animals are when you are standing right next to them.

Sunset cruising

Our last night consisted of a Zambezi River sunset cruise. You don't get very close to the Falls (probably a good thing) but you can see the mist. We saw crocodiles and birds along the way and lots of other sunset cruise boats. Back at Camp we could see a drone display over the Falls featuring the Top Five African animal images. It was really quite spectacular and unexpected. Turned out there was a convention of travel agents at the Lookout Cafe and the display was part of the tourism board promotion.

Day 15, April 16, we departed Victoria Falls for Johannesburg and our connecting flights. George took Pam and Susan into town for another quick shopping excursion. He also showed them the township he lives in.

The trip home was thankfully uneventful though the flight from Johannesburg was very full and very long (an additional 3 hours longer than the same flight over).

Link to Elephant Camp video.

Link to Hwange Bush Camp blog post.

Link to Khulu Lodge and Tent Camp blog post.

Link to Amalinda Lodge blog post.

Africa Animal Video.