I’ve been waking up in the morning with terrible bites on my legs. I think there must be some kind of bugs in my blanket. Yesterday my right leg was full of tiny red bites all over the place and today my left leg was covered. It looks so gross! It’s also gross realizing a bug of some sort has been crawling on my leg and was able to get that many bites without me even realizing it. Yuck!!
Anyway, after our amazing day yesterday it was hard to fall asleep last night. We did a lot of talking about our day and were also excited for today! I got a decent night’s sleep but not the greatest. I got up a little before six to shower and get ready. Our pick up for today’s adventure was at 6:45am. We had a quick breakfast of cornflakes with banana slices and then it was time to go. A nice little bus picked us up. We were the last ones on the pickup route, the bus was already full. We were on our way to an elephant ride! The lodge we went to was a little ways out of town in Mosi-O-Tunya Game Park. It was a beautiful lodge right on the Zambezi River, about 10 Km up river from the falls. We didn’t see much of the lodge part, we drove straight to where the elephants were. About half the group went for the lion encounter, and six of us stayed for the elephant ride. It was so beautiful when we got there. There was a huge thatched roof building where the bathrooms and outdoor dining room was but they had also set up some chairs and a table for tea and coffee on the lawn right next to the river. After drinks and settling in, we were given some brief instructions and then the elephants came out. They were just incredible!! I have seen elephants many many times before and have even ridden one before in Zimbabwe, but it’s something that will never get old, just like Vic Falls. Seeing the incredible size of these animals and their huge tusks was just amazing! We got to go right up to Bob, the first huge one to come out and we stroked his tusk. Each elephant had a nice big saddle type thing on its back and a guide was already sitting on top of each one. We climbed up the loading dock, steps leading up to a platform, the elephants walked up to the edge and then we climbed aboard. I was on a big 25 year old elephant named Matenga. He had huge tusks! The guide in charge of Matenga was Roy. There were 6 large elephants, a couple juvenile ones and a couple babies. Since there were so few of us, we all got to have our own elephant with a guide. Even though some of the elephants weren’t being ridden, they all went along on the walk. The babies walked too and the little 2 year old one even had a guide riding it. They do this so at a young age it’s already getting used to being ridden and going on these walks. The ride was just so enjoyable. We walked through the park, but since we were relatively close to the camp and river we didn’t see very many animals. I wasn’t really expecting to. We saw some birds including a grey lorry (mom…spelling?), a plover and a vulture. No amazingly colorful ones though. I also saw impalas and monkeys, but nothing too exciting. They said sometimes the wild elephants will be around that area frequently, but usually in the dry season when they come to the river for water. I was just enjoying the ride for the gorgeous morning and scenery. We also got to see the lion encounter people near the river. We saw one lion but it was too far in the distance to get a really good picture. My favorite part was when the elephants walked into the Zambezi River. The current is swirling just below you but you feel safe because you are sitting atop a huge giant. There was a part that got rather scary. One of the younger elephants got too close to Matenga so he got mad and there was some trumpeting and a little skirmish and the guides yelling at their respective elephants—all this happening while we’re standing in the river. For a second I had a vision of me falling off the elephant into the river and being swept away by the current or eaten by a croc. Well none of those things happened. J We posed for some good pictures and then kept going. The ride lasted about an hour and then when we got back we dismounted and got to feed our elephant. They elephants got down on their bellies and we sat right on its leg. The guide gave us a pouch full of cereal type treats to feed our elephant. It was so cool sitting on the leg of this gentle giant. Although gentle, I also realized the power of him. I was inches away from gazing into his huge eye and his tusks were right next to me. It was cool and scary at the same time. After the feeding and petting, the elephants said goodbye to us by raising one leg and raising their trumpets to salute us. It was so cute! We thanked our guides and then the elephants left. We had some more refreshments of tea and biscuits and then watched the DVD of our walk…of course we had someone filming us on this ride too. The DVD was such good quality—the film guy was amazing and had the coolest angles. However, we decided against purchasing this one since we bought the DVD of our gorge adventure yesterday.
Our elephant walk group consisted of a couple from England, an older lady from Illinois, a lady from Switzerland and then us. Such a nice multicultural group and everyone was so nice. On the ride back we had a great time chatting with the lady from Illinois. We got dropped off in town because we wanted to stop in the office for the gorge swing place and pay, since the credit card machine wasn’t working yesterday. Unfortunately it still wasn’t working so we went across the street to get cash instead. Then we walked back to Jollyboys. We took the nice short cut path that was an easy five minute walk. We got our swimming suits on right away and went to spend the day at the pool. While we were on our elephant walk the guys came to drop off our DVD from yesterday so we had fun watching that and re-living the terror of the jump.
By 4pm our bus was here to pick us up for the cruise. We picked up one other family from another lodge and then headed to the river side. The boat launched from a beautiful lodge right on the edge of the Zambezi! It was gorgeous. We found wonderful seats on the top deck right at the front. There was a good crew of people on board…all nationalities. We were expecting this cruise to just be drinks and snacks but then they surprised us by announcing we’d have supper too. We enjoyed a leisurely cruise up river and saw some birds, hippos and warthog. Other than that there wasn’t much wildlife on the banks. Right after supper the sun set and we got tons of gorgeous pictures. Nothing beats an African sunset. It was such an enjoyable evening. We made good friends with a British couple that was also on the elephant walk with us.
After the 2 hour cruise we came back to the hostel and enjoyed a quiet evening. We have a roommate now. Asher from New Zealand is staying with us. It’s been fun getting to know him. He’s 21 and a medical student who is doing medical work for five weeks in Zambia…he’s travelling alone. That would take lots of courage to do that! Tomorrow is our last full day here. Pastor Hartmann is picking us up here in the evening and I think we’ll spend the night as his house.
Today definitely had less adrenaline than yesterday but it was still a gorgeous day full of countless blessings!
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