Zambezi Kiwi

We definitely kept the best for last.

We kicked off our final week with mum and dad by heading into the national park again. We asked the Good Lord to let us see more wildlife, and as dad said, he probably giggled.

There is just no way images can capture what we saw, so you’ll have to add a dash of imagination to it all. It started happily enough. We saw the long, elegant necks of giraffe and rounded the corner of the road to see a group of the gracious creatures, ready to cross the road in front of us.

We carried on and watched with delight as elephant, not 50m from us, bathed in a little stream to our right.

We saw a herd of wildebeest (ugly creatures, by the way). We stopped to gaze out at the golden glow of evening stretched across the Zambezi River. We decided to head home.

And that’s when it happened. A herd of elephant, crossing the road right in front of us. We stopped to admire, then realised they were coming our way. Before we knew it, the elephant were grazing not 5m from us, while a HUGE bull elephant approached from our left. Behind us was now a queue of cars 10 long, and to our right, yet more elephant.

Mum nearly died. How her heart is still working I have no idea, because she was flapping, and huffing, and puffing, and telling dad under all circumstances to MOVE. Of course, that was the one thing we honestly couldn’t do. At one point Kepler broke into hysterics, her performance of terror was so convincing.

In the end, a group of well-seasoned national park visitors drove us past us, laughing, in their huge landrover, and went straight through the herd.

Throughout this time, Will was vomiting his heart out with what we now know was a local bug that went on to hit all of us throughout the week!

Anyway, the next day was my birthday gift to dad; whitewater rafting down 31 kilometres of the Zambezi River, over 19 rapids, a little under half of them grade 5. There are only 6 grades.

I’ll let the video speak for itself…sorry about the swear words Grandma. We didn’t choose the music!

After that adventure it was my turn to be sick (more on that another time), before heading to Victoria Falls Hotel for High Tea with mum, church one final time, and then the airport. How did we find ourselves there so quickly?

Suffice to say there were plenty of tears. After all, this is the end of a wonderful season of being close to my parents for six years, and the start of a new adventure in the far flung wilderness of Victoria Falls.

We were so grateful mum and dad could visit, and get a little taste of life over here with us.