May 23rd, 2025

We had an early pick-up in Cape Town so we got up at 6am and had some breakfast before checking out at 7am. We had 2 hours to wait after check-in at the airport for our flight to Zimbabwe. The flight was 2 hours and 40 minutes and when we were landing you could actually see the mist from Victoria Falls. It took a bit to get through immigration and we got a visa and another stamp in our passports. Our driver was waiting to take us to the hotel which was 25 minutes away.

Some of the views out the plane window. The mountains are outside Cape Town.

The heart is where we were in Cape Town and the blue dot is where we are now.

Along the way our driver asked if he could show us the town of Victoria Falls prior to going to the hotel and we were fine with that. The town is better than an average African town but still pretty poor. All of their income is from tourism. Our driver kept telling us how safe it was and how nice everyone is and to please come into town and see for ourselves and shop local. He explained that word of mouth was the best advertisement for their economy. He kept pointing out the occasional tourist walking through town saying “see how no one is bothering them”.

We are staying at the Palm River hotel and it surpassed expectations. It is right on the river and they have a large fence around the property and then they dug a trench and put electrified fence to separate the hotel from the river.

The hotel lobby and wart hogs apparently are their local yard service. They also have several Roomba type lawnmowers and occasional one of the lawnmowers runs into a wart hog but they don’t seem to mind.

We have a nice room right on the water with a balcony and while not as cool as Cape Town it is still jacket weather here.

We walked around the property which has a nice swimming pool and I updated the blog and then it was time for our 4:45pm pick-up for our sunset dinner river cruise.

Having a beverage by the river at the hotel and us checking in for our dinner cruise. They had a table full of Aperol spritz as a welcome drink.

The boat holds 24 people and there were 6 of us on board. All from the US. They had almost as much staff as passengers. The meal was 6 courses with wine pairings.

Our menu and then our first course which was an excellent tomato soup.

Ostrich on the left which was not my favorite but mostly because it was pretty raw. The ravioli was excellent.

I picked fish as my main course and Kathy did the cauliflower steak.

Fish with side potatoes on the left and cauliflower steak on the right.

There were tons of boats doing the sunset cruise and we did see a herd of hippos.

The sunset was beautiful and tons of color which seemed to last forever.

Sunset on the Zambezi river. When cruising on the river half the time you were in Zimbabwe and the other half Zambia.

The stars were incredible and you can see the southern cross right in the middle.

The cruise lasted 3 hours and our ride back to the hotel was waiting for us when the boat docked.

The hotel property at night. You can see the pools with the restaurant in the back ground.

We watched a couple of shows on the computer and then we went to sleep. We debated on a 6am bird watching tour in the am but decided to hold off a day and sleep in a little bit. Tomorrow is Victoria Falls and very excited to finally see it.