Flying into Zimbabwe? Do yourself a favor: sit as far to the front of the plane as possible. When you witness the immigration process at Victoria Falls Airport, you’ll understand why. It’s a slow, manual, maddening process — probably for both us and the immigration officers. Key elements include unlocked drawers stuffed to the brim with foreign currency, visa numbers plucked from the air and yelled out loud to avoid reuse at adjacent desks, and furious scribbling and stamping. Despite having computers at the desks, computers play no part in this process, something we’d see over and over again in our border crossings.

A long wait and a short ride later, we were dropped off at the Sprayview Hotel, which gave us our first indication of the economic situation in Zimbabwe. The country has experienced a lot of difficulty over the past several years including political unrest, massive breakdowns in agricultural production and major industries, and rampant inflation — currently in the neighborhood of 9000%. Shortly before we went, the government created a $200K bill, printed on only one side to save ink. It’s extremely difficult to get supplies and recent import restrictions and pricing requirements have only made the situation worse.

The Sprayview is on the outskirts of town and most definitely does not have a view of the spray from the Falls. The hotel was clearly a lovely place a few decades ago, but it was very much showing signs of decline. The rooms were old and in disrepair, the pool was suspiciously cloudy, and they had only four of the 20+ items on the restaurant menu. Despite these difficult conditions, we could not have asked for a more friendly and attentive staff. James felt like a king drinking $60,000 beers pool-side.

We had dinner at the hotel with Kiwis Ian and Edna who we’d met at the airport and would be traveling with us in Botswana. Amanda had the fish for $950,000 (talk about sticker shock!) and we enjoyed a bottle of wine while watching our dinner-side entertainment. Once they broke into “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, we knew we’d be passing on the CD.

Tommorrow on Survivor: Botswana, and getting stranded in the bush without our guide or supplies! (Really, we’re not kidding!)

We arrived in Johannesburg at 8 AM and got our first taste of Africa. The arrivals area was complete chaos, with a solid throng of people waiting for friends and relatives. We were lucky to quickly find Elsa, our driver who would take us to our hotel. Elsa was from Cape Town and had (in James’ opinion) the cool Afrikaans accent to prove it. And she was just fluent enough in English to be dangerous.

Elsa’s a professional driver in a city known for horrible traffic and frequent carjackings. She drove like it — a white-knuckle combination of knowing lots of local shortcuts, a heavy foot, and a casual disregard for traffic laws we tend to adhere to in the US. Conversation under these circumstances was a bit hit-or-miss.

We checked in to Cloud’s End Bed & Breakfast in the Melville neighborhood and were soon picked up for a tour of Soweto (South West Township). Our guide, Thabo, gave us a great history of the township and the anti-apartheid movement on the way out of the center of Johannesburg. We drove past huge slag heaps left over from a bygone age of gold mining, roadside fires, and endless construction. The City of Gold looks a bit now like the City of Cranes as they frantically prepare for the World Cup in 2010. (I’ll be happy to take bets on whether the monorail is done in time. I’m betting against. - James)

The tour included a stop at the Hector Pieterson Museum (highly recommended shorter alternative to the famous Apartheid Museum) and swings past the homes of Winnie Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, both of whom still live in Soweto. One of the notable local construction projects is the creation of huge amounts of public housing to try and improve living conditions in Joburg’s outlying slums. We passed a collection of these shacks, a patchwork of corregated tin, brick, and wood - living conditions that must truly be awful.

Just before our jet-lag-induced early bedtime, we headed over to the main strip of Melville for dinner. We were startled to find a street that would have been perfectly at home in San Francisco — clubs, bistros, more restaurants than we could pick from all packed into a few short blocks. After a lovely dinner at an Italian restaurant, it was straight to bed to try and get our tired bodies nine hours ahead of San Francisco time.

Next up: Zimbabwe, land of hyperinflation and baffling border bureaucracy.

Part of the fun of an African vacation is getting there. From the West Coast of the US, you’ve got to really want it — you’ll be flying for at least 24 hours just to touch foot in South Africa, not including layover time. From there, you might have to take one or two connecting flights in addition to time on the road before you’ve reached your destination. Once we started to peruse 40+ hour itineraries, we were emboldened to take a nice, long block of vacation. If you’ve got to burn at least 2 days on both ends of your trip, why not just take a month off?

We chose the San Francisco - London - Johannesburg route on Virgin Atlantic because both flights were direct and avoided a layover somewhere in the US. And also because of Virgin’s seat-back entertainment systems.

First up: we took a 12-hour red-eye from San Francisco and arrived in London’s Heathrow at 10:30 am. We had an eight hour layover, so we hopped on the Tube to meet our friends Sarah and Dave at Piccadilly Circus. Somehow we missed the forecast for rain — rain in London? madness! — so we got drenched. We had a lovely lunch at Tiger Tiger catching up with both of them. Sarah had to go back to work, so Dave kept us awake and moving with a walk to Trafalgar Square and some time in the National Portrait Gallery. Just before rush hour we got back on the Tube and trekked back to Heathrow for another red eye flight to Jo’burg.

No photos for this leg. I did try to take a few pictures of the architecture of the National Portrait Gallery, ignorant of the rules. I’m happy to report that even a stern verbal warning sounds better in a British accent.

Next up: Johannesburg, the City of Gold. And car-jackings. And caustic smog. Fun!

Last week, Amanda and I got back from an amazing trip to Southern Africa. We spent two weeks camping out in Bostwana, a few nights in the Luangwa River valley, stopped in Johannesburg, Victoria Falls, and Lusaka, and spent days on airplanes. Along the way we took nearly 4000 photos — lucky for you, about 3000 of them were terrible.

We’ll be posting more about our trip here over the next week, with a little background on each place we visited. But first, we’ve put together an album of our favorite photos from the whole trip. Enjoy!

Our Favorite Africa Photos