This vlog documents Nate and Kara Buchanan’s walking safari experience near Victoria Falls. It follows their stay across Victoria Falls Lodges properties (Safari Club and Luckathula/Locathula Lodge), a daily vulture feeding/education session, and a guided walk led by Charles around an unfenced watering hole with crocodiles, elephants, buffalo and marabou storks. Notable moments: vulture experience (daily at 1pm), eating an "African almond" (mgongo nut) retrieved from elephant dung, and close-range wildlife viewing from a blind; factual claims in the video include eight crocodiles at the waterhole, marabou stork wingspan noted as 11 ft, elephants digesting 30–40% of what they eat, and Cape/African buffalo reaching ~750 kg (nickname: "Black Death").
Questions this video answers
1:00 pm
Eight crocodiles
11 ft
30–40% of what they eat
Up to 750 kg
Chapters
Not a bad view to wake up to this morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you. Gonna grab breakfast at the.
We just had a few buffaloes show up at the watering hole.
We were originally supposed to only be here for one night because they were completely booked tomorrow night and we were going to be super sad to leave, but thankfully they worked their magic. They found us another room. So now we get to stay for an extra night.
I'm so happy we don't have to leave.
Me too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But we're moving rooms, so we got to get packed up quickly.
Goodbye, awesome room.
Hello, new room.
We have been moved to the Locathula Lodge. This is the place we're staying. This is a warthog.
So cool.
Like, this has made my day. So the Victoria Falls Lodges has four different properties. Last night we stayed at one of their five star properties, which was the Safari Club, and it was awesome. They tonight we're checking out one of their three star properties which is the Luckathula Lodge. And while we might have lost a little bit of luxury, we've gained a lot more space and some new warthog friends. Carrie, you want to show us around?
Yeah. This is the patio. These walls roll up. That side does too. And then we can let them down at night and even have just the netting so we can still see outside. We have a kitchen. Here's our bedroom. And up the stairs there's another bedroom with a view of our yard. It is a beautiful day today, so we're gonna go sit by the pool and get some lunch.
More warthogs.
They're everywhere.
We're never gonna make it to the pool if we keep passing all these warthogs.
Nice. Go, go, go.
No, come back.
There's a B.
For lunch.
We got a world famous burger from the Buffalo Bar before our afternoon activities.
And it looks amazing. One of the best burgers I've ever had. I see why it's world famous. Every day at 1pm here at the Safari Lodge, they do a vulture experience. And we're not exactly sure what that is, but it has something to do with feeding massive birds, which is awesome. Vulture time.
Yes, vulture time. All right, just wait for me down there.
Wow, that's a lot of birds.
The vultures know it's lunchtime, so the.
Customers are already in the restaurant. Let me do the waiting and I'll quickly come and join you.
Oh, my God.
Wow.
See?
Oh, this.
So much dust.
So here we do have the two types of vouchers already here.
I expected it to be cool, but that was like, really cool.
We learned a lot about vultures from this guy.
He knows his stuff.
About the vulture culture.
He told us all about why they feed him here to keep him safe from being in other places. Because poachers poison them. Because they give away the poachers when they kill an animal and then farmers poison them. A lot of people have to get the vultures.
The vulture show is over and our next activity this afternoon is a guided walk around the watering hole.
This is Charles, the man with the gun. He's going to be guiding us safely through the bush. We're not going to have to use that, right?
What's that tie up? Nut? The whole idea of walking through the bush is to give you a chance to get a bit closer to nature and feel.
What it's like at ground level rather than driving in the safari car. You just need to take a few precautions. Lion, elephant and buffalo. If they see us, they either going to choose fight or flight. And fortunately, most of the time they choose flight. But should the rare chance happen that an animal is coming for us, we must stay together and await my next instruction. Mustn't run. One that way and two that way. It's harder to protect.
Yeah, there's eight crocodiles here. There's the biggest one you see on the far side, but he's only small. That's a small one.
Yeah.
There's crocodiles in the water hole.
This is awesome because it's the watering hole that we've been staring at for the past two days. And. And now we're literally right here.
Come this way. Yes.
Don't go too close. You can snap in at your feet.
There's literally a crocodile right there.
I built this.
Our guide is the one who built this blind where people get to watch the elephants in the afternoon.
It looks like a termite mound. And so the animals don't even know you're there.
Perhaps passing air on a flap at the back that has blood vessels, cools the blood.
We're in the watering hole and the eight crocodiles that we just saw, and we're going out into the bush.
Those are the marabou storks. They're the largest birds in Africa. And the largest wingspan ever recorded was 11ft.
They were also voted the ugliest animals in the world.
I never thought I'd have to avoid piles of elephant poop while walking. That's what I'm doing right now.
This is amazing.
It's pretty insane what we're doing. Right now there's some.
I think that's buffalo.
I think that's elephant.
Proper name for this buffalo. Is the Cape or African buffalo their nickname? Black Death. Yeah. So up to 750 kg of bad mood.
And that's why we have a big size caliber.
Yes, I know.
To deal with buffalo. Yeah.
We just learned that these are mopani trees which are the elephant's favorite food. And the worms that we ate last night are all from those trees. They lay their eggs on little leaves and the people eat them here for protein.
The elephants only digest 30 to 40% of what they eat. The elephant ate this to get the flesh around here and then a bit later out plops the seed.
Wow.
You can see how hard. Let me just try it first.
Yeah, it's good.
So what am I eating?
It's the inside of a nut from the poo of an elephant. Okay.
The African almond that came from the poo.
African almond, Poo almond.
The local name, mgongo nut.
Tastes like a nut that was in.
An elephant's stomach and now it's in your stomach.
Yep. Proud of it in Zimbabwe.
So nice.
Best thing I've ever tried to came out of an elephant stomach. This area that we're walking in is not fenced in. We're not in a game park that's gated off. It spans from here all the way to Botswana. We are in the wilderness with any wild animal that wants to come get us.
Next up on Kara and Nate walking to Botswana.
I trust Charles to take us there.
I, I would go with Charles. We could survive eating elephant poop and worms. I learned that I would rather see a lion than a Cape buffalo because the closest he's ever been to dying is with a Cape buffalo, which is terrifying because we saw like a hundred this morning.
Pretty sure we could survive out here for like a week at this point.
I think we could.
These paths that we're walking on are not man made. They are made because so many animals walk on them.
We're quickly walking back to the lodge now. One, because it's getting dark and we don't want to get eaten by any animals. And two, because I think we're going to get a chance to get into the hide to try to get an up close view of some of the animals was a stick.
Get in there as quickly as possible. And then once we're in sit, get your things all sorted. Then we have to stay deep quiet because if the animals hear us they're always nervous at waterfalls because normally predators wait so we get in there and we have to sit quietly and move slowly. So that's pretty quick.
We're getting into the hide to wait for the animals.
Right.
Now we wait.
Are we all together? Okay, so let's just stay close together. Just in because of the light.
Wow. Sadly, we didn't see any big game while we were in the hide, but it was still a lot of fun getting to sit in there and watch the crocodiles move around the lake.
We've been back from the watering hole for like, 15 minutes now, and there are four elephants and a giraffe. And we were sitting, like, right there. So close.
There's our dinner spot. Tonight we're having dinner at the hotel's on site restaurant. It's called Makuakua. Sorry if the lighting is really bad. We're outside.
Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. Thank you, ma'.
Am.
Dinner was delicious. Although there was slightly less drumming and dancing than there was last night. Night.
A little bit.
I forgot to put my. I should probably go change.
We hit it.
I feel like we could be attacked by a lion at any moment.
Currently kicking elephant poo to see if it's fresh.
We.
That is the biggest bone I've ever seen. Gotta catch the group. Don't want to get eaten.
