Our First Full Day In God's Wonderland!

Just a quick note to let you know we made it to Zimbabwe all in one piece. We got here shortly after 3:00 our local time here in Victoria Falls yesterday (Friday - the days of the week are already confused in our minds). Both of us are exhausted after spending over 25 hours on planes and another 10 waiting for planes in airports. But in reality the plane rides were quite good with decent food and very little turbulence. The only difficulty is the inability to sleep in the seats very well! We both enjoyed the free wines on both Air Canada and South African Airlines. Shirley of course discovered right away that if you said you couldn't decide which of the two red wines you wanted they would give you both. And after the meal if you told them you liked one better than the other but couldn't remember which, that once again they would give you both so you could try and figure it out! The kind she really enjoyed was a new grape for us called "Pinotage"!

Everyone along the way has been friendly and helpful. At the Johannesburg Airport we had to get a boarding pass and check in as we had to take a different airline. Needless-to-say it was a pain finding out where we had to get all of that done, but it all worked out once we started asking for help. There are so many different races here that it makes you feel like the entire world is based here in Africa.

The resort we are staying at is called The Kingdom and it is wonderful, although I have some problems with Lucy who believes that because we are in the Kingdom we are now royalty! . This resort reminds me of the things I have read about the late 1800's when "the sun never set on the British Empire." We were so tired after we checked in yesterday that while I was having a quick shower, Shirley fell asleep. I also went to sleep and only woke up when the housekeeping staffed knocked on the door to leave a chocolate and turn down the bed. Shirley just rolled over and said she was going back to sleep. (She has to catch up on the 12 hours a day sleep she normally tries to get.)

Last night about 7:30 we finally got up and went to the casino. Within an hour I was up $50 US and Shirley was up $35 US. We decided to quit and went to a restaurant in the casino, which is attached to the resort. It was a steak restaurant and the food was very good. Not quite like what we get in our favourite restaurant in Las Vegas, but still good and a whole lot cheaper. (Meal for the two of us cost $35 US.)

Today we were both up early and had a wonderful breakfast of fresh fruits, wasps, and eggs with various meats, mostly bacon. Did you notice "wasps" in that list? It was amazing to see all the wasps flying around the table with the fresh fruit. It was like a cloud that you had to walk into to get the fruit - - and then dish your fruit out of the bowl without getting too many dead wasps! Some people waved their arms a lot to shoo away the wasps, but they only came back two-fold. We discovered that if you did nothing they would leave you alone. We carefully chose two hard boiled eggs and brought them back to our room for lunch. Shirley had brought some cheese and crackers with her so we decided to have them for lunch later in the day.

We found out that to walk to the Falls was going to cost us $30 US and as we are going to be going to it on the train trip we decided to by-pass it and go to the bridge that goes into Zambia. As long as you only go on the bridge you are in Zambia, but not officially. For to officially go into Zambia, means that as Canadians we would have to pay another $75 US each to back into Zimbabwe. There is some kind of immigration dispute going on between Canada and Zimbabwe that has caused the Zimbabwe government to make it expensive and a pain to come into their country, Which of course hurts the small time tourist operators and hawkers, Oh yeah it hurts us too! For right now this stay and with the train it will cost us $300 US for nothing other than two fancy pieces of paper glued into our passports each. It has been worth it however to see Shirley's eyes light up with each new adventure.

On the walk over to the bridge and on the bridge we were constantly bombarded by hawkers with their various wares. All told us of the babies and wives at home that they had to feed and that everything they had for sale was made by themselves!! John got ripped off by paying 100 SA Rand for something that Shirley got two of for the same price. Shirley is a tough customer. Even when we walked along the main street the street sellers were after us, Shirley got a little impatient at one point and looked these two poor lads in the eyes and told them NO!!! with that look that only "she who must be obeyed" can give. In unison the two poor black street hawkers, said :ooh ooh.... And stopped following us. But just as we got about 20 meters apart, one of them yelled "miss it is much better for us to sell this to you to earn our money than it is to rob you!!!" We both took care to be sure and say "no" from that point onward with a smile.

Shirley's well trained nose got us to a "Liqur-Mart" we bought some beer and five liters of white wine for the train. On returning to the resort it was earlier afternoon where we had lunch on our deck and Shirley talked to her sister and some friends via Skype. Both the sound and the pictures were excellent. And even though we called some regular telephone numbers it still cost us nothing It was del as per our grandfathered c9ontract with Skype.

The pool was calling our names and so we spent two and half ours in the sun and a lovely pool, while we talked with a couple from England who own a house in Cape Town and in England. After a quick shower we both went to the casino where our luck from last night eluded us. Shirley lost $50 while I dropped $30, so in the end we were only up $5.

With this full day behind us we went out for our dinner to the resort restaurant. The food was excellent! We had crocodile, chicken, roast beef and my favourite impala! It was different tasting and spiced just right, whereas the crocodile tasted like chicken.

But the hit of the night was Shirley dancing with the native entertainers. Everyone loved her!!! She sure knows how to make people laugh! We ate too much, laughed a lot and even on our walk back to our royal palace we saw the full moon through the trees.

 All in all it was a great day, our first full day in Africa. And to top it all off we just got a note saying the people from the train are coming tomorrow to pick us up, which means no  hassle with taxi etc. I will try and add some pictures to this blog, but for those of you who are on Facebook you will find most of the pictures there.

Take care and remember to write to us. Oh yes, several of you have noted that if you are not signed in with a blog on blogspot, you can't comment on our blog page. Sorry about that but that seems to be Google's policy, undoubtedly to get more people to sign up. Anyway, please just write to our email address,

john & Shirley