1-3 August 2016

We stopped overnight in Johannesburg after the game drives.  Then we spent the last two nights at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. We stayed in a 112 year-old British railroad hotel that made us feel like British royalty.  Victoria Falls is one of the seven natural wonders of the world along with Grand Canyon and the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights).

Our friends, the Beckstrands, came to our hotel in Johannesburg, picked us up, took us to visit the Johannesburg MTC, where we visited wit President and Sister Ashton, took us to dinner, and drove us back to our hotel.  It was wonderful to visit with them again.  They served with us in the Netherlands and we went to Alaska with them a couple of years ago.

The front of the Victoria Falls Hotel. The pictures below are more of the hotel.

A view of the courtyard at the hotel.

Formal British high tea - we had to experience it.

Scones, cream and jam on the
bottom, little cakes and cookies
on the second level, and little
sandwiches on the top.

Another bed with a mosquito net around it, but we
always took it off as there were no mosquitoes
this time of year. (Loel: Actually there were no mosquitoes in the hotel.  I received three bites when we went on a hike around the falls.  Mosquitoes in the rain forest.

This is our sitting room - bigger than the bedroom.
It was such a classy hotel with amazing service.

One of the big lounge areas of the hotel.

This is where we ate breakfast each morning at the hotel - and a buffet dinner one night.

Just a warthog wandering around the hotel grounds.

We took a sunset dinner cruise on the Zambezi
River one night - this wasn't our boat, but
another one floating by.  

On this dinner cruise we saw more birds, hippos, and crocodiles.

On the dinner cruise - they had these cute little lighted things at each table.

Again, the African sunsets are spectacular.

My favorite sunset.

Loel and Scott took a helicopter ride over Victoria
Falls, which they absolutely loved.  Look at the
pictures they got:

The falls was created by an earthquake that
created a fault line.

It also created this delta effect and the water
flows into the canyon over a mile wide.

We had a great local guide at the falls who explained all about them plus the economic situation in their country, which isn't good.  He was great.  We stopped for lunch at this place called The Lookout Cafe, which overlooked the falls with people bungi jumping and ziplining below. Coincidentally his wife is LDS.

The mist from the falls drops onto the Zimbabwe
side of the gorge.  The river is a natural
boundry between Zimbabwe and Zambia.
The increased moisture has created a small rain forest
on the Zimbabwe side.

This is the dry season and Zimbabwe is experiencing
the same drought as South Africa. Our guide said
this is the best time to see the falls because in the
summer when the rains come, all the water over the
 falls creates so much mist it's hard to see the falls.

When the water is high, the scene from the air would be spectacular.
Video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qul6tmHMiIs

It's hard to describe the volume of water.
Video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt-5N54P4ks

This bridge connects Zimbabwe and Zambia.
They bungi jump from the little building in the
middle of the bridge.

An almost perpetual rainbow from the mist.

Some of the wildlife in the forest.

We went to a local market there in Victoria Falls.  Here is Ginger bargaining for a cool wall hanging she wanted.  So many of the booths had exactly the same things and they were all pretty aggressive and pushy, which got tiring.

This is the old Zimbabwe money from a few years ago.  It finally became worthless and they now use the American dollar for their currency.  Loel had fun buying a few of these huge bills.  (Loel: These are actual bills.)

The Zimbabwe economy is in a shambles. The current president is 92 and has been in power over 30 years. The economy became so tenuous that money put in the bank one day could lose half it's value by the next day. A 50 trillion dollar bill is humorous to us, but it was catastrophic to the people.  The government finally asked the U.S. if they could use U.S. dollars as their currency and that has brought some stability. But the people still have very little and that's one reason you see so many people making things to sell - because there are no jobs.  I picked up a $1.00 bill that was issued in 2008 and I've never seen a bill so worn, tattered and dirty.  It's be used hard for a lot of years.