What do you get when you combine a river lodge, a small-ship cruise and a bush-plane hop? CroisiAfrica's Safari Cruise, an itinerary that strings together Johannesburg, the Chobe River, Lake Kariba and Victoria Falls into one continuous trip. A recent review of days five to nine of the journey gives a good sense of what passengers actually sign up for.
The middle stretch starts with a genuinely informal flight: no boarding passes, no flight number, just a twelve-seater Cessna that guests walk out to, with a bottle of water as the entire inflight service. The plane touches down at Victoria Falls for Zimbabwean immigration, then continues 80 minutes north over Lake Kariba to a red-clay airstrip in Matusadona National Park. From there it's a 45-minute transfer to the African Dream, a 16-berth houseboat moored on the lake, where the drive doubles as a game drive ending with elephants silhouetted against the sunset.
Lake Kariba itself is the trip's most fascinating stop. Completed in 1959 for hydro-electric power, the dam flooded a valley so fast that 50,000 people were relocated and thousands of animals were stranded on shrinking islands; the Operation Noah rescue, run by Rupert Fothergill, saved more than 6,000 creatures. Today the lake's petrified mopane trees host nesting fish eagles, and an estimated 10,000 crocodiles patrol the water. Guests alternate water safaris and tender-boat sundowners with game drives in Matusadona, where guides read the bush closely enough to track lion prints to a pride feeding on a waterbuck.
Day eight brings the finale: a flight to Victoria Falls town, a Zambezi lunch cruise (with crocodile skewers and ostrich salad on the menu for the adventurous), and an optional game drive through a 6,000-hectare private reserve hunting for rhino from a conservation project that has grown from six animals in 2006 to seventeen today. The last morning is spent walking the rainforest paths beside Victoria Falls itself, ponchos provided, before flying back to Johannesburg for connections to Europe.
Practicalities matter here. An 11-night version of the cruise starts from £6,561 per person in 2027, excluding international flights. That covers four nights cruising and four at a lodge with all meals and drinks, hotel nights in Johannesburg and Victoria Falls, the Zambezi lunch cruise, the domestic flight from Johannesburg to Kasane, excursions, game drives and some gratuities. The reviewer visited in September, the dry season, which delivered abundant wildlife and no mosquitoes but left the falls at reduced flow, worth remembering if the falls themselves are your priority. Perhaps the strongest endorsement: several seasoned travellers on board called it the best trip of their lives. This is one for anyone who wants safari, water and spectacle in a single, well-choreographed booking rather than stitching together separate lodges and transfers. Details via CroisiAfrica's UK site.
