A Zimbabwe Family Vacation – From a Kid’s Perspective

Taking an African family safari vacation is one of the most rewarding things you could possibly do with your family! I have a daughter, Abby, and a son Mikey. Every time we take a trip to Africa as a family, I always have Abby and Mikey write journal entries each day – spotlighting things they saw and learned that day.

Abby was kind enough to share her journal with our blog readers – here are some of her entries from when we took an African family safari to Zimbabwe in 2012 (at the time, Abby was 12 years old):

June 13

We are finally at our hotel after the longest flight ever.

I just had the best mac n’ cheese ever. It was delicious. I never want any other mac, ever – except that type.

June 14

We are going to Victoria Falls today. I can’t wait! We are staying at another hotel. I can’t wait to see the waterfall. I wonder if I’ll be able to sleep with the noise.

Later that day

We arrived at the airport and we found our luggage – yippee! After we arrived we went to a great hotel. They gave us 20 chocolates! It was such a nice hotel when we walked in they gave us peppermint-scented towels to “freshen up.” Then, before we walked to our room, they also gave us fresh, homemade lemonade. Our room was beautiful – it was all white.

Hold on, I forgot something important! You may not think so, but oh well. While we were waiting for my mom at the airport we saw these really awesome African dancers. We took a picture with them!

Back to what I was saying before . . .

After we found our room we went straight to the pool. It was freezing cold. My mom saw a monkey at the pool, which was so cool.

After the pool we went and saw Victoria Falls. We got drenched. Good thing we had our bathing suits under our clothes. We got so wet. It was so much fun!

When we were done we went to see if the zipline was open. It was not open so we got a reservation.

On our way back to the hotel we saw a family of cute warthogs and had a great dinner!

 

June 15

This morning I had the best breakfast ever. I had a few pieces of fruit and an omelet. It was absolutely delicious. After that, we went ziplining. It was so much fun. I LOVE AFRICA!! It is awesome.

Right after ziplining we had to leave the hotel. Booooo 🙁

We had a really long car ride but it was so much fun! Our driver spoke Ndebele so he taught us some stuff, like . . . “Shateen” means bathroom! Manzi, water; sihlahla, tree; and mvuu, hippo. The drive, mom, dad, Mikey, and I had a delicious lunch. We saw like a million animals. We saw elephants, babboons, zebra, impala, and kudu. When we drove down to camp we also saw buffalo and elephants. The elephants were spraying dirt all over their family. And the itty bitty baby elephant was just lyaing down and got smothered with dust. He was also kicking mud onto himself. It was so cute.

Now we’ve seen two of the Big 5 in just a short period of time – elephant and buffalo. All of the Big 5 are elephant, buffalo, leopard, rhino, and lion. I hope we get to see all of the Big 5. Three more to go!

The elephants came right up close to the pool while we were in it and drank there!

June 16

I woke up at 6:00. They actually woke us up for good reason! OUR 1^ST GAME DRIVE!! Wooh hoo! We saw lots of elephants, zebra, kudu, impala – did you know that impala have an “M” on their bottom?

I also saw a guinea fowl get into a fight with an eagle of some sort and the guinea fowl lost. I took a whole bunch of its feathers and stuck them in my hair. Our guide then showed us how to identify different types of poop!

We drove back to camp to have lunch and then we were off again. We saw giraffe, elephants, impala and more. When it was getting dark outside we drove back to the camp. Right before dinner we went to the pool to see if there were elephants. And there were! We watched them drink for a while. It sounds so cool when they drink – you can hear them swallow the water.

I’ll share some more journal entries from Abby in a future post. Hope you enjoyed!