Our stay at Toka Leya camp was strictly for tourism - we had two great cruises on our little 4-passenger boat. This photos illustrates the width of the Zambezi and you can see the spray from Victoria Falls in the distance. Sometimes it can rise 1,500' in the air.
As we got closer to the Falls, a slight breeze came up and the spray started to move a little. I love this photo because of the reflection in the calm river .. calm where we were!
You can see the spray separating here into twin plumes - I was only slightly anxious as we approached that part of the river but we had Captain Donald at the helm and I had faith in his skill.
One side of the river had a lot of palm trees while the other had few. They are not native here but elephants are thought to have brought the seeds down to the river's edge and 'planted' them there as they came to drink. A few swam across the river so seeds were planted there too. Don't you just love that solitary cloud?
Apart from all the animals and birds along the river, we stopped to look for the Swifts who had colonized this embankment. Both times we sailed past it, there wasn't a Swift in sight but Captain Donald assured us that they did live there!
We saw several helicopters flying over the Falls, and a few ultralights ... this one came to have a look at us looking at him!
We saw several other larger boats on the river - some were pretty ratty and most were old - some were party boats, others were dinner boats - and one was named the African Queen but it was a far cry from Bogie's African Queen. Here are photos of the ones we came across.
I so loved the river trips with Donald......except when the boat motor conked out, got a bit nervous seeing that muddy bank where I'm certain hippos and crocs hung out!!! Thank goodness he used his teeth on that piece of wire and got us going again!
ReplyDeleteI think the Zambezi was the biggest and most interesting river I've ever cruised on.
Mary X