Geographically, Zimbabwe and Zambia share a border that runs through Victoria Falls. Theoretically, every adventure activity (or even any activity in general) that you can do in Zambia you can do in Zimbabwe.
Generally speaking, it tends to be quite a bit cheaper to do the activities on the Zimbabwean side due to their less economically stable currency. However, there is one notable exception: the Devils Pool at Victoria Falls.
You can only reach it from the Zambian side, requiring a day visa at the least if you do not plan to spend more time in the country.
Dune 45 in Namibia is one of the star attractions in the country. Thanks in part to its proximity to the road through the desert, Dune 45 offers visitors an opportunity to climb a sand dune and take in the spectacular desert scenery.
It is all well and good that it is recommended to climb this sand dune, but there are a few special considerations to keep in mind before ascending.
There has been a blow-up in the travel blogging community over the recent inclusion of captive dolphin experiences at a bloggers' conference in Cancun, Mexico. Those against the idea of captive dolphin experiences started a boycott, published a lot of posts with “facts” taken from documentaries like Blackfish and The Cove, and overall made me shudder at the poor form with which the argument was presented. I could go into the dozens of reasons as to why this was a horrible choice for our industry, but to sum it up in one statement, my biggest point of contention was that bloggers were fighting to restrict their own access to research a hotly contested topic- one we were personally invited to come and see firsthand.
Rather than take part in this debate once the conversation degraded past the point of being civil (so, about 5 minutes in), we decided to take matters in our own hand. We had to find out the facts for ourselves.Â
We had already done a wild dolphin encounter in Mauritius earlier this year, but to be able to adequately talk about the captive alternative, we made it our quest to take in a private dolphin experience during our conference stay in Mexico. We were signed up for the provided tour with the conference, but unfortunately the boycott got the event to be cancelled (or at least, we think it did. We never received an official notification from our sponsor, which makes the industry-declared “cancellation” seem very suspicious).
Luckily, a representative from Dolphin Discovery invited us to check out their dolphinarium during our stay, outside of the official conference itinerary, to experience their dolphin encounter for ourselves.
While we are normally independent travelers, sometimes there are destinations that we want to visit that are not as easy to travel solo. Sometimes this is a time issue, and others it is logistical in nature.
In these cases, we look towards guided tours as an option to relinquish some of the travel responsibilities onto others who are much more qualified to get us to cool destinations in the amount of time we have available.
One company we have used in the past is G Adventures. The first time I went on a solo trip on the Egypt and Jordan Adventure (partly due to travel logistics, and partly due to my limited time). The second time Angie and I went on the Cape Town to Victoria Falls overland safari tour in order to hit South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia (we selected this one purely for logistical reasons and a great sale price).
The Middle East tour is something that I have often called the perfect tour. From the price, itinerary, to the guide, everything was perfect. Our overland Africa safari, not so much. In this one, I wanted to break down my experience on these two tours and share some things to keep in mind when booking a G Adventures tour for your own trip.
