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Rome - last day

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This will be our last blog. NCL informed us this morning that our cruise has been cancelled due to mechanical issues with the ship! So we will fly home this coming weekend. On the positive side we had a great holiday in South Africa. However, we have also had some pretty bad negatives too. Our beloved pussy cat, Mussy, died while we were away. If that wasn’t enough, Sue’s vertigo caused her to fall in a hotel room, hitting her head and requiring four stiches! So our feelings would be well expressed in a string of four letter words! So, here is our last report. Yesterday we spent hours on a hop-on-hop-off bus viewing the highlights of Rome. We have been to Rome before on an excursion from a cruise ship in 2013, so we did not feel the need to visit places we had been before. One ancient site that we missed last time was the Trevi Fountain so we spent some time there and took lots of photos. Our experience of Rome today can be best revealed in the selection of photos below. We hav...
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Rome

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After some 24 hours in the air (!) we have arrived in Rome. Mind you, flying business class has its advantages. We were able to get a good sleep on the plane from Johannesburg to London so we arrived fresher than if we had been cramped up in economy. Also we were in the air so long we had three breakfasts in the one morning! Surprisingly our clothes still fit! Our hotel, the Hotel Dei Borgia, is in the very picturesque back streets of central Rome. Like all the buildings here it has its historic façade but has been extensively updated inside. Today we are just chilling out and enjoying the comforts of the hotel and the local cuisine Tomorrow we are going to take a hop-on-hop off bus tour and take in the sights. Photos of our street. Note the motorbikes, of which there are heaps:
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Victoria Falls and The Elephant Camp

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This morning we visited the Falls and were amazed. The flow over the falls from the Zambezi River is supposed to be relatively low at this time of year but it seemed massive to us. We will never forget the roar of the water going over the top and plunging into the rapids below. The photos will tell the story much better than we can explain in mere words. As you will see there is so much spray it is very hard to get clear photos, especially of the main falls. What an unforgettable experience! From the Falls we travelled to The Elephant Camp which is a sanctuary for elephants, particularly orphans and injured elephants that have had to leave their herds. As the elephants are so tame there we were able to touch them and actually feed them by hand! We loved watching them wallowing in the mud! Yet another unforgettable experience. Tomorrow we fly back to Johannesburg and pick up our flight to London, from whence we will fly to Rome and spend five days there before picking up our c...
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Victoria Falls and Chobe National Park

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On Wednesday we flew to Zimbabwe and landed at Victoria Falls Airport. Our hotel is the famous old colonial Victoria Falls Hotel and is situated a short distance behind the top of the Falls. We enjoyed dinner at sunset on the lawn listening to the roar of the Falls and watching the spray rising and glowing in the fading sunlight. Marvellous! Today we crossed the border into Botswana for a day tour of Chobe National Park. The Park is not as big as Kruger but is rich in wildlife. We travelled through the Park on some of the worst dirt roads ever created but then enjoyed a lovely smooth sail on the Chobe River with a buffet lunch included. What are the poor people doing? We still didn’t see lions but we did see lots of other animals and birds. Enjoy the photos! Photos: Most of the photos are pretty obvious. The fourth photo is of a vulture. 
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Johannesburg

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Yesterday we arrived in Johannesburg after a very long drive. The highlight of the journey was a visit to the Blyde River Canyon, one of the largest canyons in Africa. The photos below will give you some idea of just how spectacular the view was. This morning we did a tour of Soweto and visited the Apartheid Museum. The name Soweto used to be an acronym for ‘Southwestern Township’ however the official name was changed to Soweto in the 1960s. In this formerly very segregated land it was intended as the place where black people working in the city could live. Today it has a population in excess of 5 million and suffers 27 per cent unemployment! So you can imagine that it is not a very wealthy place to say the least. There is one fairly affluent area, and some of Soweto consists of shacks like the other townships we have seen. However most of Soweto appears to be the sort of humble public housing that the Government tries to provide.  While in Soweto we visited the house in w...
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