A day on the water and the rails

Our first adventure today was a river cruise on the Zambezi River. We were the only people today, so we got the guide to ourselves. I think he was excited when we mentioned that we were interested in seeing birds.

We spent the next two hours in a speed boat driving back and forth across the river looking for birds. We also saw a family of hippos and a few elephants, but the birds were the stars of this show today. The hippos were fairly amazing. We got really close and it was interesting how disinterested they were in us. There were probably seven of them in the water and we could see various snouts coming and going and then they all submerged for a second or two. I am not sure how the boats don’t hit them. They are massive beasts that are incredibly well suited to hiding in water. We paused for a short coffee break and the fellows set a table for us after ensuring that the picnic spot was devoid of elephants and crocodiles. It was a relaxing way to spend the morning. We are thankful to our friend Eric who got inspired us to start looking at birds. My hope is that he will identify these birds so we can reflect later on what we saw.

We came back to our hotel for a bit of a siesta before venturing out on the Royal Livingstone Express for an evening back in time. We boarded the steam train that was one of the original trains from when the railway was completed in 1905. We got a great history of the train and the bridge construction before we departed on the Cape to Cairo main track. We stopped on the bridge that Dale and I saw while we were visiting the falls on our first day. It was an amazing view. We then went back on the train and had an amazing 5 course meal. We sat with a couple of Brits who were on the last day of their holiday. It was fun to chat about the ups and downs of Brexit with them. Both voted to leave but had very different reasons and reactions to the referendum. Neither are happy now.