{"id":14972,"date":"2016-04-10T20:24:19","date_gmt":"2016-04-10T19:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geoffjones.com\/?p=14972"},"modified":"2016-04-10T20:24:19","modified_gmt":"2016-04-10T19:24:19","slug":"25089-biking-kasane-victoria-falls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/?p=14972","title":{"rendered":"25089 Biking Kasane to Victoria Falls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tuesday, April 5, 2016<\/p>\n<p>I left The Old House jut before 8am after the owner rescued the girl from faffing about on her ancient Windows PC trying to sort the bill out.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_14975\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14975\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1-IMG_3747.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14975\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14975\" src=\"https:\/\/geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1-IMG_3747-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Notice wind direction :-(\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1-IMG_3747-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1-IMG_3747-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1-IMG_3747.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-14975\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Notice wind direction \ud83d\ude41<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The day started with a brisk headwind as you can see from the flags image and a climb of cause. Reaching the main road I came across a huge queue of trucks waiting to get into Zambia. I turned of and went down the remarkably quiet road to the Zimbabwean border post, passing large troops of monkeys at the roadside.<\/p>\n<p>At the border there was a queue of 3 trucks \ud83d\ude42 so I just biked straight to the office. I must say I love these border crossings on a bike! No queues ultra friendly guys and all very civilised I handed over my $55 and in return my passport page was filled with a bright sticker (I later learnt that for $10 more you can get a visa that admits you twice).<\/p>\n<p>So on I cycled I was surprised to see several trucks carrying loads of refined copper cathodes obviously from Zambia. Another interesting thing was no trucks were carrying\u00a0containers. Lots of elephant dung on the road which I wasn&#8217;t expecting. I didn&#8217;t see any but an oncoming car stopped to warn me of a herd crossing the road 1km away so they are close. The only animal I saw apart from a dead snake was a poor tortoise in the road, I chivvied him up to get to the verge before a truck got him!<\/p>\n<p>Finally I made it to the Shoestrings Lodge\/Backpackers must say it was quite a bit worse than I expected with an uncomfortable bed and need of maintenance \ud83d\ude41 Plus \u00a0decidely expensive since Zimbabwe lost its currency to hyper inflation in 2008 (Ten Trillion notes are sold by the pesky touts in the street) they now use the US dollar.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_14974\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14974\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1-IMG_3820.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14974\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14974\" src=\"https:\/\/geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1-IMG_3820-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"about the best under the conditions\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1-IMG_3820-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/1-IMG_3820.jpg 683w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-14974\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">about the best under the conditions<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I discovered it was $30 for entry to the falls but you could get a glimpse from the railway\/road bridge so I walked there followed by a group of touts offering banknotes\/carvings\/bowls etc Maybe the train at $120 for a 3km ride and dinner would have been better \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.strava.com\/activities\/536614834\">The Strava shows I<\/a> rode\u00a053.3mi with 1,152 feet of climbing.<\/p>\n<p>My pics of the day are here<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tuesday, April 5, 2016 I left The Old House jut before 8am after the owner rescued the girl from faffing about on her ancient Windows PC trying to sort the bill out. The day started with a brisk headwind as you can see from the flags image and a climb of cause. Reaching the main [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-biking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}