For our Fall Break, five friends and I chose to go to on vacation to Livingstone, Zambia. We spent 8 days taking a break from the hectic nature of classes and guest speakers and simply did whatever we wanted. We had an adventure planned for nearly every day.
On Monday, we experienced the gorgeous sunset on the Zambezi during a relaxing sunset cruise. We saw a TON of hippos and even an elephant hanging out by the side of the riverbank!
Sitting right on the edge of the Falls. One misstep & it would have been “Bye bye, Christiana”!
On Tuesday, we ventured just up the road to the Zambia side of Victoria Falls. Victoria Falls is the largest waterfall in the world & revered as one of the world’s Seven Natural Wonders. It is so large that it is located in two countries – Zambia and Zimbabwe. This particular event quickly got to be more thrilling than we anticipated – a private guide took us to a place where we could sit on the very edge of the Falls, lean over the edge and look down, and swim in a natural pool about a meter from the edge of the Falls!
We decided to take it easy on Wednesday, so we spent the day catching rays and reading by the side of the pool at our backpackers’ hostel.
Lizz Mook (Valpo) & Kayla Griffin (Pacific Lutheran) free-falling down the gorge on the gorge swing.
Thursday was definitely the scariest of our adventures. We spent the entire day at a gorge near Victoria Falls doing all sorts of ropes activities – including the gorge swing. For the gorge swing, you get strapped into not one, but two, harnesses, take a giant step off of the edge of the gorge, and free-fall 53 meters in 3 ½ seconds until you begin swinging at the end of the rope until they let you down. It is gut-wrenchingly terrifying, but the view was great!
The majestic “Main Falls” on the Zimbabwe side of Victoria Falls.
Friday’s adventure was going back to Victoria Falls, but this time we went to the Zimbabwe side. To me it seemed like the Zimbabwe side was more of the touristy side, and the Zambia side was more for the adventure activities. Both sides are absolutely breath-taking!
Our final adventure was our Chobe Safari Day in Botswana on Saturday. In the morning we went on a boat safari on the Chobe River. On that safari we saw lots of elephants, hippos, birds, lizards, and crocodiles. The afternoon game drive in Chobe National Park showed us hippos and elephants out of
Our safari adventure through Chobe National Park was a success!
the water. The hippos are massive creatures – its mind-blowing! Our day in Botswana was definitely a day to remember.
We made it home to Windhoek the morning of Monday, October 24th. Now we’re getting back into the swing of classes and moving right along. I can’t believe there is only just over a month left of my time here!
April 9, 2014 at 9:15 pm
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