Colleen and Mish celebrated the end of house building, and Colleen's birthday, as well as the return to Africa from Canada of friends Dominique and Al, with a getaway break to Victoria Falls from 24 to 26 October, 1999. It was a great holiday!
| Here are our friends Dominique and Al from Ottawa. Note the solid teak bench and the grand kitsch of the Kingdom Hotel where we stayed. | |
| We were amazingly impressed by the quality of service we got almost throughout the holiday. The service was world class but there was no doubt we were in Africa, as this resident reminded us, a mere 200 metres down the road from our hotel, walking towards the Falls... | |
| How's this for the scene on the main road to the Falls and Zambia, just outside our hotel? | |
| The biggest thrill of our trip was white water rafting directly below the falls - a fantastic gorge, really exciting rafting, and excellent service from Shearwater Adventures. Here we all are, nice and calm at the start... | |
| But things soons got exciting, with waves way over our heads. Fortunately the rafts are self-bailing and our captain, Norman was wonderfully skilled - both at handling his raft and the water, and at handling the tourists. | |
| It wasn't long before Colleen took a spectacular backflip out of the boat and into the mighty Zambezi! | |
| We were told to "hang on" - and hang on Colleen did! Fortunately there is a lot of water in the Zambezi so the rock she imagined might crash into her, was covered with a goodly flow of water, and all ended well. | |
| And just in case the rest of us felt superior surviving the time Colleen went overboard, here we all go over into the drink. Norman was up on top of the upturned boat in a flash, hauling the boat right way up and getting passengers back in, in double-quick time. | |
| Here's another shot that gives you an idea of the size of the rapids, said to be amongst the top three whitewater rafting sites in the world. Certainly the all-Zimbabwean staff were wonderfully professional and the whole operation was very slick, from good safety systems to the people taking these pictures and a video of the whole adventure. | |
| Then, in calmer mode, there was the obligatory "booze cruise" at sunset on the Zambezi just above the falls. We had this croc, as well as hippos, birds including a fish eagle, and a boatload of human flashers to entertain us. Also lots of fun phoning friends all round the world via satellite phone. | |
| No shortage of luxury in our hotel. This is the view from our room out over our private verandah (shoes drying from the rafting!) | |
| We also had a look at the falls themselves - as always very impressive but hard to photograph because of the smoke that thunders. But here is Colleen "Livingston" Dawson at the spot. | |