Livingstone, Zambia
L I V I N G S T O N E
Z A M B I A
Our honeymoon has officially begun! ...Unfortunately, it started with 48 hours of travel - oy vey! South Africa isn't super easy to get to from Seattle... Luckily we had a first class upgrade and access to airport lounges, which means free booze!
After a long few days, we finally made it to Livingstone. We were jet lagged and exhausted, but determined to stay up and make the most of our stay at Tongabezi. We splurged on the honeymoon suite and it was worth every penny! Tongabezi is a small, luxury resort and there were only 20 guests during our stay (the maximum number of guests on the property is only 30). We had a 24-hour dedicated "valet" named Japhet, who was the best!
We quickly dropped our bags in the room before meeting Japhet along the river, where we had a tapas lunch before our sunset cruise.
On the sunset cruise, we saw our first wildlife sightings: crocs, hippos, baboons, and elephants. Our guide was fearless and got a little too close to the elephant along the water, this spooked him and he briefly charged at our boat - Danny had a good laugh at Hailey's terrified reaction. During sunset we stopped at an island for "sundowners", a new term we'll now begin using regularly for our evening cocktails.
When we got back, Japhet served us dinner alongside the river at a private table, so fancy! We went back to our room to find the outdoor bath drawn with rose petals, it was the perfect end to our first night!
On our second day in Livingston we had a private, guided fishing excursion. We were fishing for anything that would bite, Danny was hoping for a tiger fish! Unfortunately, we didn't have any luck, but we spotted some hippo and enjoyed the ride through the Zambizi river.
When we returned, we had couples massage in our room - Danny's first ever massage! Not totally sure how relaxed Danny was during the massage, but Hailey loved every minute of it!
Our next stop was a boat to Livingstone Island, which is a small island on the edge of Victoria Falls, for lunch. We walked the edge of the falls and even took a dip in the water, just feet from the 354ft drop! Hailey kept her distance, but Danny was living life on the edge... Literally.
After lunch we went on a private game drive, where Hailey spotted her first giraffe from afar, it was pretty cool! We were both so exhausted from the busy day, we nodded off towards the end of the drive - hopefully we didn't miss any leopards...
Our stay at Tongabezi flew by and we had so much fun! We were bummed to leave, but needed to meet up with our overland safari group to begin our 32 day drive through Central and Eastern Africa. On our way to meet them, we stopped by Victoria falls for a different vantage point - good thing we came prepared with rain jackets!
