25.6. – 26.6.2025
On Wednesday, Taku drove our truck to the Zimbabwe border. The border formalities were quickly taken care of on both the Botswana and Zimbabwe sides. The only slight hiccup came when checking the e-visas for Zimbabwe. Since Marko had applied for visas for our entire family, he was the only one whose visa stated that it had already been paid for in advance. Of course, Ronja was next in line after Marko’s visa was checked, and she was told that she had to pay for her visa before she could enter the country. Well, Ronja being Ronja, she immediately started complaining, “I’ll never get out of Botswana.”
Marko and Stanley went into the border officials’ booth with them, and after a little clarification, our official understood that the “paid” note on Marko’s visa applied to the rest of us as well. It would have been fun to take a couple of photos of this episode and Marko standing on the “wrong” side of the immigration window, but when a big black man is rolling his eyes and saying that you can’t enter the country, it’s better to keep the camera in your bag and smile nicely.
It wasn’t far from the Zimbabwe border to the city of Victoria Falls. There we first went to the office of a local event organizer to see what kind of activities were available for us at the Victoria Falls. Our original idea was not to do anything special here, but somehow our travel companion Sophie managed to persuade Risto to join her on a zipline ride over the Zambezi River. This meant that Ronja also wanted to go, but she wanted a partner. Marko agreed to join Ronja on the zipline, and Jaana got to be the photographer.
Next, we drove to our hotel to see if our rooms were ready. Since we arrived at 10 a.m., the rooms were still being cleaned. For a moment, it seemed that those of us staying in tents would not get rooms, even though that was what our itinerary said. However, everything was sorted out, and we got really nice rooms for one night at the Shearwater Village resort.
Since our rooms would not be ready until around two in the afternoon, we decided to walk towards Victoria Falls and the zipline. Marjon, Sandy, and Denis, who were on their way to see the actual falls, joined us. Since the zipline required crossing the border bridge between Zambia and Zimbabwe, we went to the border station next to the bridge to get a bridge pass, which allowed us all to cross the border without having to officially leave Zimbabwe, where we had arrived only a couple of hours earlier.
When the five of us left for the cable car departure point, the others went back to the falls. A visit to the falls costs $50 per person for foreigners. Children get into the nature park for half price. The entrance fee for Zimbabweans was only $7. The high price for tourists is understandable, as tourism is the most important industry in Victoria Falls. You have to take the money where you can get it.
When we got to the zipline, we heard that the tandem pairs had to be rearranged because Ronja and Marko’s combined weight was too heavy for the zipline. In the end, Risto and Marko slid across the gorge together, followed by Ronja and Sophie.
Everyone thought the zipline across the gorge was a really cool experience. Sophie seemed to be the most afraid of the slide, while Ronja was mainly worried that her glasses would fall into the river below. Risto thought he could have gone over the river again right away, and Marko also seemed very happy that he had joined the others.
We returned to the hotel at two o’clock and settled into our rooms. Jaana immediately went to find out if there were laundry facilities, as we had accumulated quite a lot of laundry again. The hotel only offered laundry services on a per-item basis, so in our case, the bill would have been $80 if we had decided to do our laundry that way. So Marko started searching online to see if there were any other laundry services in Victoria Falls. He found one that washed laundry for $5 per bag. So we packed our laundry into a large backpack, and Marko set off for the laundry located in another hotel. Before doing so, however, we thought we’d ask our hotel once more if they could offer us a better deal before we took our money elsewhere. They didn’t really have an offer, but they called the laundry at the other hotel, and apparently someone was sent to pick up our laundry. At this point, it was a little unclear whether we would pay for our laundry at our hotel or if the money would go to the other laundry, and whether there would be some kind of commission fee. The hotel estimated the price for our laundry at around $25-30, which is still quite a lot, but we had to get our clothes washed somewhere.
It’s actually quite surprising that we haven’t seen any self-service laundromats anywhere. During our six-month trip around Southeast Asia, they were everywhere. We had somehow imagined that doing laundry would be easy and cheap on this trip as well. On the other hand, we are rarely staying anywhere for more than one night, and we usually arrive quite late, so if we can’t do our laundry where we’re staying, it has to wait until the next time. Of course, we could always wash our clothes by hand at campsites, but they wouldn’t dry quickly enough by the next morning due to the cold nights.
In the evening, we had our last dinner together as a group, after which we had tickets to a show called Simunye at the local theater. The show was performed in English, so we had no trouble following the plot. Risto was particularly impressed by the male actors’ abs, Ronja admired the women’s hairstyles, and Jaana paid special attention to the djembe drummers who accompanied the musical scenes. The show was interesting. It had just the right mix of music, dance, and dialogue. At the end of the performance, the audience was invited onto the stage to take photos with the performers. Risto took the lead and immediately went to take photos with the two male leads. Ronja followed suit. However, she wanted to take photos with the female leads.
When we returned to the hotel, our laundry was surprisingly ready. Originally, we had been told it would be ready the following morning. The hotel’s price estimate was accurate, and we got our laundry done for a total of $25. However, it was inexpensive compared to our travel companion Dimitri, who ended up paying $34 for his laundry and he obviously had a lot less laundry than the four of us combined.
On Thursday morning, we also said goodbye to Taku, who was leaving to drive his truck back to Cape Town. After that, Denis and Sandy agreed to look after the children while Jaana and Marko went to see the Victoria Falls a little closer. The entrance fee to the nature park cost us a total of $100, but we wanted to go there anyway, since we had come all this way.
The Victoria Falls are the only waterfalls in the world that are simultaneously over a kilometer wide (1,708 m) and over 100 m high (107 m). When comparing all the waterfalls in the world in terms of height, width, and total water volume, Victoria Falls is among the three largest waterfalls in the world. We have now seen two of these three: Niagara Falls in America and Victoria Falls here in Zimbabwe. Now only the Iguazu Falls in South America, on the border between Argentina and Brazil, remain.
Everyone may have a slightly different answer to the question of which waterfalls are the largest in the world. If we consider which waterfalls are the highest, with water flowing continuously over a large width, then Victoria Falls wins. We were there at just the right time, as according to one of the guides, the falls are currently flowing at 95% of their maximum capacity. During the dry season, the falls are considerably smaller. At that time, you can even walk across some parts of them.
A wide, paved path has been built around the falls, allowing even wheelchair users to admire them. There were 14 different spots along the path from which to admire the falls from slightly different angles. At the beginning of the trip, we laughed a little at the vendors selling and renting raincoats at the gates of the nature park, as the spray from the falls did not reach us at all. When we reached the closest viewing point to the main falls, we understood why the raincoats were being sold. From the viewing point, all we could see was watery mist that soaked us completely. Fortunately, it was a warm and sunny day, so our clothes dried very quickly.
After a couple of hours, we returned to the hotel to pick up the children for lunch. We had lunch at a nearby restaurant called Three Monkeys. Stanley had not exaggerated when he called it the best restaurant in town, as the food was really good! After lunch, we had a couple of hours to relax in the hotel lobby before we were picked up and taken to the Zambian side to board our next truck.
First, we were taken by minibus to the Zimbabwean border, to the same place where we had picked up our bridge pass for the zipline the previous day. This time we showed our real passports and got our exit stamps. After that, we packed our stuff into another minibus and drove across the bridge to go through the Zambian border formalities. This was the first border where we didn’t have to fill out any extra paperwork. We just showed our passports, got our stamps, and were ready to enter Zambia. From the border, we drove 15 minutes to the Victoria Falls Waterfront Hotel, where we met our new guides (Gift, Casper, and Lin from Zimbabwe) and our new travel companions.
We stayed in double rooms equipped with Doom mosquito repellent. When sprayed into the air for a moment, the mosquitoes fell dead to the ground almost immediately. There were no mosquitoes in our room, but a mosquito massacre took place in the children’s room. Everyone slept well without the buzzing of mosquitoes until the alarm clock rang at 6:20 a.m.