Waking up on day 18 was bittersweet because for many of us, it was our last full day as Mara’s passengers…. At Victoria Falls, over half of the Perfect 10 Plus Three were splitting up… Here’s where we would all be dispersing to:

Lena, Johanna & Jane: HOME

Dara: DRC

Kitty & Silia: To Joberg with a DIFFERENT Acacia Truck

Kris: Vic Falls & then Malawi

Amaury: Vic Falls & then Home

Since we knew we would all be separating soon, in true squad fashion, we ALL went in on our final optional activity together while still on Acacia… a morning game drive in Chobe National Park before heading off to Zambia & Victoria Falls!

….

THANK GOODNESS WE ALL WENT

When we hopped into the 4×4, we actually had the same guide we had the day before for the boat cruise, and he asked us what animals we wanted to see, since we “only had 3 hours” for a “short game drive” that morning. Our pretty much unanimous consensus was that we wanted to see leopards…. and of course our guide essentially facepalmed because leopards are one of THE HARDEST to find. They were also the last of the big five that we hadn’t seen… so he said he would give it a try.

The game drive started off as pretty much every single one of our game drives did… with elephants and antelope. It’s kind of sad because we’re a bit unimpressed yb elephants now, especially after staying at Elephant Sands camp, since we were so close to them. However, it’s a good sign to see them on the drive and have it not be super animal-quiet, so we were happy about that. We drove around for a bit and then all of a sudden our driver told us to “BE QUIET!” and started driving pretty fast. Turns out one of the local leopards was spotted by another guide, who radioed OUR GUIDE and told him where to go so we could also catch a glimpse of the leopard.

We whipped through the park and arrived JUST in time — the leopard was climbing down off of her perch in a pretty high tree, and she jumped down and then walked across the road right in front of our truck. SO. LUCKY.

We watched her until she was out of sight and then continued on.

Not five minutes later did we stumble onto a full pride of lions. Now, we’ve seen some large prides before but this pride was special because there were CUBS!

C’mon… final game drive and we saw a leopard AND lion cubs? Basically can’t get better than that.

Oh, wait, except for when an entire herd of elephant decides that it wants to cross the road RIGHT WHERE YOUR TRUCK IS so they semi-stampede around you as your guide tells you to “stay still” and “don’t yell” so you don’t antagonize them any further.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnd that was our last game drive.

Could it really have been something simple and quiet?

Oh heellllll no it couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been us if it had been.

Once we got back from the game drive, Maja whisked us onto Mara and we were off towards Zambia! We had a border crossing to attend to, and this one was via ferry… and Masai HATES this one, so we wanted to be sure to get there with lots of time to spare. We actually ended up getting through pretty quickly and we were on the ferry without a problem! We had to ride the ferry on foot next to Mara and OF COURSE this was the first time it rained while we were on tour. We all started longingly at the truck which had all of our rain gear inside that we couldn’t get to…. whoops!

Once we reached shore we had to go process our entries into Zambia, and then we came back to Mara, Masai managed some traffic in the parking lot, and we were on our way!

We actually thought we were heading to our camp, but we were surprised with a hike in Victoria Falls Park! Masai parked, Maja led us to the entry area, and set us loose in the park with a report-back time. We were super excited to set out to see the falls, so we high-tailed it down the path that indicated that we’d get to see them and we actually got there pretty quickly! The problem was…. there was no water! Lesigh. I was hoping the reports that the Zambian side isn’t as nice as the Zimbabweian side were exaggerated… apparently not so in the “wet” season. The water hadn’t reached the falls yet from the rains to the north…. so the whole Zambian side was almost completely bone dry! Oh welllll. We ended up still having an hour to walk around, so we took another path down to the “Boiling Pot” and found water! It was about a 20 minute down, 10 minute up walk, and we enjoyed cooling our feet off in the water at least. 🙂

After Boiling Pot, we headed up, Kris went baller status and bought us all water since no one else had cash (thanks Kris!), and then we were back on Mara heading to camp! Once we arrived we headed into the activity booking office to plan our events in Vic Falls for the next day. Once we finished that (after like, 2 hours, seriously! Victoria Falls is EXPENSIVE but as I mentioned, we have serious FOMO), we went to set up our tents and then headed over to the restaurant for drinks and dinner. We had plans to eat together the next night and party it up for Kris’ birthday so we weren’t TOO broken up just yet… but it was still more somber than our usual meals.

Then we turned in kinda early since we had an activity AT 7 the next morning so we had breakfast at 6 before getting picked up bright and early for our crazy day full of activities!