Three countries in one day. A couple of elephants. One waterfall. Two threats of arrest. Just a normal couple of days…

We crossed the border from Botswana to Zimbabwe near Kasane and decided to try and cycle as close as possible to the Zambezi river, thinking this would be a nice route to Victoria Falls. Only it turns out this was another of our ill-advised (not at all advised) decisions.

Having gone about a kilometre down a beautiful road we stopped to have some breakfast and filter some very dodgy looking water we’d picked up at the border. Soon after carrying on, a Land Cruiser pulled up next to us to ask if we knew where we going. We did but it turns out he knew a bit more. The chap explained we were cycling towards a hunting concession and that they don’t like random people turning up and might shoot or arrest us. As if that wasn’t enough, he also told us there were five male lions ‘around’ who don’t like bicycles. Not quite sure how he knew this but we decided to turn around anyway.

After 80km of disappointingly uneventful riding – the only animals we saw were monkeys – we climbed the final hill of the day.

Coming down the hill into Victoria Falls Town was an awesome experience – you can see the spray and hear the falls from a couple of kilometres away. We headed straight down to the falls, stopping only for a beer with a view of the gorge (arguably more impressive than Fish River Canyon) and people bungee jumping off the bridge. After crossing into Zambia we persuaded/tricked the guards into allowing us to take our bikes to the Falls viewpoint. This turned out to be quite an experience.

The view from the top of the falls was undeniably stunning but after a bit of posing we were up for a bit of a challenge. We’d seen a cool looking footbridge from the main bridge that crosses the border and thought it would make a good photo. Little did we realise just how much effort would have to go into it. Descending perilously steep, narrow and slippery steps with fully laden bikes is no easy task. Finally at the bridge the enormity of our stupidity became obvious, but that’s never stopped us before so on we went.

We weren’t thinking very clearly at the time so proceeded to push our bikes across a lethally slippery crossing called the Knife Edge Brige, with a raging torrent below us and a downpour of spray above us, without bothering to check whether our dry bags were actually done up. Somehow our passports, phones, cameras and solar chargers managed to survive.

Making our way back up the path in the failing light was tricky. But not as tricky as getting back across the Knife Edge Bridge which involved holding onto the bike with one hand, the railing with the other and using both feet as skis in order not to fall over. It was largely successful. Despite being a hideously poorly thought out plan, I haven’t laughed that hard in a while and we had smiles on our faces as we crossed back into Zimbabwe soaked to the skin. We then proceeded to cycle through a herd of sleeping buffalo without us or them knowing, much to the shock of the lodge staff whose track we had just come down.

That was a couple of days ago and since then we’ve been relaxing at a lovely backpackers and fixing bikes. Mainly relaxing though.