Guest post from Katie and Ian's blog...

For our first two nights we stayed with some friends of Emily's as there were already other guests staying at her house. Mike and Lauren made us very welcome and we all went to a local restaurant that evening. We also got to know their newly adopted stray puppy, Manky (Emily is adamant the correct spelling is “Manqui”). Although he lives outside on the porch, he was still small enough to slip through the iron bars on the front door gate to sneak in to the house whenever the opportunity arose.

We spent the first couple of days wandering around Livingstone realising how expensive everything is and working out what we wanted to pay for. While we did that we had a look at the museum and the crocodile farm; the crocodile farm was very fun and interesting. They're reminiscent of dinosaurs, immune to all diseases and seriously mean. The guide assured us that the oldest crocodile was now too overweight to be any danger of lobbing people into the water with its tail (owing to its weight) and hopped into the enclosure to prove this by picking up the tail. Given how tightly he was holding onto the fence, though, I'm not sure he was totally convinced himself. We learned that poking a Crocodile with a long stick elicits a violent response, and that the surplus baby crocodiles become sought-after oils and fashion products. He also let us buy a couple of slabs of meat to feed the crocodiles, since it wasn't feeding day. We also got to see and handle some of the baby crocs and snakes in the attached reptile house.

Having finished the tour we stopped for a drink while we decided what else to do, and having finished our drinks we deduced from our experience the day before that a sky that colour meant it was about to pour with rain, and stayed where we were. We used the time most profitably by deciding which tours we should spend money on, and concluded that we'd book a walking safari through Zig-Zag, a local guesthouse run by Emily's friend Lyn. We wandered down to Zig-Zag to wile away the afternoon with a beer in very comfy chairs (even Ian looked like he was about to have a nap), and book the tour ($70 p.p.). Sadly the morning walking safari left at 6:30am (well after dawn, but much earlier than we'd got up so far this trip). Plenty of locals were already up, including kids heading to school for a 7.15 start. When our 4wd picked us up, we were the only two tourists booked for the tour – with four staff (tour guide, ranger, driver and trainee tour guide) we certainly weren't ignored. The ranger came complete with a rifle to shoot into the air if we got into any sticky situations with the local residents. Not only did we get to see lots of game animals close up, but also lots of interesting commentary on the birds, flaura, fauna and poo. We can now tell the gender of Giraffe droppings from their shape. We were also shown tree frog nests, velvet mites and termite mounds. We didn't see the (very rare) white Rhino, although apparently the reserve has two new baby white Rhino. The elephants and buffalo also eluded us. There are no big cats on this reserve., but we did see just about everything else (Zebra, Giraffe, Impala, Warthogs, Wildebeest, Waterbuck, Bushbuck...). Along the Zambezi river we also saw crocodiles, hippos and three types of kingfisher. Lunch on the riverbank concluded a very enjoyable morning.

In the evening we decamped to a posh hotel on the riverbank to watch the sunset while sipping cocktails and beers. Very civilised. You might be wondering why there has been no reference to the Falls yet. We promised Emily to save our visit there until the weekend so she could come along with us to show us the sights. We could see the spray from the edge of the falls from the hotel terrace, but so far no sight of the Falls themselves...