I have stayed in some great hotels in Africa . . . some grand hotels . . . and some total dumps as business, pleasure, journalistic assignments and plain old-fashioned wanderlust took me from the very south of Cape Province to the extreme north of Tunisia; from Morocco in the west to Mombasa in the east, with many weeks in the middle bits and lots of time on the offshore islands.
Travel with Dusty Miller
From princely Presidential Suites to piss-poor pensions I’ve laid my weary bones down to well-earned, often exhausted sleep and spent many more nights under canvas or just staring at star-filled velvet African nights from a sleeping bag to African lullabies of cicadas, hyenas, hippos, frogs . . . and mosquitoes But I don’t think I’ve stayed a single night anywhere in the world as truly beautiful as the Royal Livingstone Hotel across the bridge at Victoria Falls in Livingstone, Zambia.
Beauty and elegance are the watchwords of this super luxurious Sun International property standing in its own spacious landscaped grounds alongside its slightly more down-market sister hotel, the Zambezi Sun.
Both hotels have private access to the Zambian National Park which runs down to the Batoka Gorge at which point up to 546 million cubic metres of water per minute plummet over the almost two-kilometer long spectacular Victoria Falls.
For the benefit of the more elderly or less fit (or just simply lazy!) visitors the hotel complex provides chauffeured comfortable, almost silent in-house transfer vehicles (golf caddy cars) to transport guests (mainly American and Australian on my most recent visit)from the main hotel lobby, bars and restaurants to rooms; in between each hotel (there are tourist gift shops and a bank/ATM at Zambezi Sun) and down to the Falls through the manicured gardens where you may well spot zebra or giraffe.
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You will certainly see the ubiquitous and cheeky grey vervet monkey and one of the busiest members of staff is a hawk-eyed youngster armed with a catapult to keep the thieving little nuisances away from the guests’ 173 spacious, well designed and beautifully furnished rooms, each with its own verandah.
Mine was on the ground floor (there are only two floors anywhere), conveniently close to the pub, reception and dining areas and overlooking the mighty Zambezi across clipped lawns. I had my own personal butler, the amiable, constantly smiling, Kennedy, dressed in vaguely Arabic-styles light clothing complete with fez.
Kennedy was severely under-employed during my sojourn at Royal Livingstone as I could think of nothing for him to do!
A classically designed sparkling rectangular swimming pool almost abuts the river; tourists from the frozen north splashed in it occasionally, but I’ve only ever visited this splendid hotel in the months of June or July, when it is deep mid-winter in the southern hemisphere and far too cold for most locals, beyond their teens, to take the plunge. (A definite case for solar-powered heating? . . . you only need to raise the water temperature five degrees above the ambient for everyone to dive in.)
Near the pool with much of it actually above the fast rushing Zambezi River is a faux-Victorian timber raised deck area used for tea and coffee, light snacks, afternoon tea and any time drinks.
It is a lovely sun-trap.
There’s something totally therapeutic about the river meandering past with hippos snorting from it.
The Smoke that Thunders can be clearly seen and heard about a kilometer away and its silver spray reaches high into the cornflower blue sky from a mini-rainbow. You can also have a decadently relaxing spa and massage on the banks of the Mighty Zambezi.
Read more about The Royal Livingstone Hotel in next Saturday’s NewsDay.
ldustym@zimind.co.zw; dustymiller46@gmail.com