Zambia and Victoria Falls feel like the "real" Africa, with five-star luxury thrown in

Due to recession, family responsibilities and work pressures, there's no annual Northwestern girls' holiday this year. So that readers are not too disappointed with the absence of autumnal reports from exotic locations, I'm returning to my finest pre-blog holiday. Here's what we got up to three years ago today on the Dark Continent.

We spent most of the day in transit to Zambia, connecting through Johannesburg airport where there is an impressive, African-flavoured duty free. I'd like to come back here with a combination of discretionary income and some knowledge of gemology, both of which I currently lack. From my companions' exclamations and swooning, I gather the diamond prices are pretty damned impressive. I, however, was captivated by the tanzanite, a rare bluey-purple stone with a high sparkle that comes almost exclusively from the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. Lacking the cash flow necessary for gems, I went for a dramatic modern beaded necklace made by a craft cooperative of native women. (Worth noting that I've gotten a lot of wear out of that necklace. Still dreaming of tanzanite, however.)

We were on an internal African airline from there. Efficient, on time and comfortable, with a lovely in flight meal and staff that still believe in customer service. I had the shock of my day when I picked up my cutlery and encountered a metal knife. On a plane. Good lord! I dropped it in surprise. Then thought how lovely it was not to be hacking away with bendy plastic. I guess they're not concerned about terrorist flight-jacking here. What a refreshingly retro experience.

We arrived at tiny Livingstone airport, claimed bags and got passports stamped in the one-room terminal and scrambled aboard buses, happy for air conditioning since the temperature was far more extreme than at the start of our journey. This was instantly recognisable as a very different country, MUCH more what we think of as "Africa".

The ground here is deep red earth, supporting dry grasses, stands of scrubby trees and the occasional towering termite mound. It's not heavily forested; I don't think there's enough water for that. Each tree seems to have its own space, and even the tallest would barely graze the roof of a single-story home. There aren't a lot of flowers here, other than the odd bougainvillea, to relieve the palette of brown, red and green.

We saw as many dirt tracks as paved roads as we drove through Livingstone, the big town in this area. It looked a lively but seriously ramshackle place. A main street supports a few side lanes; no building topped three stories. A lot of the nicer stuff was from the first half of the last century but had clearly seen better days. We drove by the state broadcasting service, which occupied a series of bungalows with holes in the roof and broken windows. Though there were a lot of signs for activities clearly targeting tourists, I didn't see anyone wandering there but natives.

The people here are, on the whole, that shade of dark, dark black you rarely see in the United States, with complexions like smooth velvet. They are, on the whole, a very handsome people, tall and exceptionally dignified. I've noticed that the women in particular carry themselves with a remarkable confidence and elegance. They all seem to have perfect posture (yes, many were indeed carrying stuff on their heads), walk with their backs ramrod straight but with a generous sway to the hips. Even the really big women, of which there are many, look sexy. I wish I could master the movement! Many women still wear skirts of traditional patterns, and traditional headdresses, adding to their exotic beauty and making them a lot more interesting visually than the men, who are mostly in shorts and tee shirts.

It's inevitable, of course, that we're conditioned by the news media. As we drove through Livingstone and I saw groups of these central Africans sitting around, or the occasional soldier in camouflage, my head immediately drifted towards stories of military coups, genocide and famine. This is terribly unfair, as it is a reality completely divorced from anything actually happening here. Sadly, Africa has a lot to live down.

Our hotel, the Royal Livingstone, is in a national park along the Zambezi river. To tell you the truth, the tourists are probably just as fenced in and protected as the animals. But if I ever get put in a zoo, please take note that I would happily be incarcerated here. The place is just as amazing as its heart stopping rack rates. ( There's what you want on incentive travel ... a magnificent experience you could never afford on your own.)

The communal areas are jaw dropping. They're all African long houses with thatched roofs, towering eves and sides open to the breeze. Inside, lavish colonial decor (lots of huge teak and wicker chairs) sits beneath spinning ceiling fans and heavy chandeliers, while the sound of splashing water from papyrus filled pools in the courtyards soothes your ears. Staff in crisp, white, colonial era uniforms are on hand to anticipate and serve your every need.

Three main buildings all open onto wide verandas, then wide patios, then lawns sloping down to the Zambezi, where a giant deck filled with outdoor chairs, tables and daybeds provides a viewing platform for the wildlife and the not-so-distant mists of Victoria Falls. Because we're inside a national park, animals are a part of the decor. We saw a giraffe out front and zebras grazing by the pool. Small, grey vervet monkeys are in such abundance the hotel has to keep guards on duty in front of the building to prevent them from raiding bar and restaurant tables. As if on Disney-inspired cue, a pod of hippos stuck their heads above the water just as we strolled onto the deck, welcome drinks of fresh fruit juice just having been pressed into our hands. Is it possible that the plane crashed, I died, and this is heaven?

After an hour of getting settled into a room that looked like a Bombay Company photo shoot set, we walked down to Victoria Falls to get a look. This was a fair hike and it was both muggy and hot. Once you get there, you're scrambling up and down uneven stone paths with a drop of a couple hundred feet on your right and not much by way of guard rails. Clearly no health and safety officer has been inspecting this place. I stepped very carefully, painfully aware that this was not the place to be a clumsy oaf, as a trip and fall would send you plunging to a rocky death hundreds of feet below. Despite my contemplation of the afterlife an hour before, I really wanted to stay alive until I saw some elephants.

The falls are, of course, impressive, though they are at first tough to figure out. On your initial view you just see lots of deep chasms snaking through the landscape in various directions, with multiple small waterfalls cascading over cliff faces at different points. You don't have a sense of a river so much as a watery delta running up to the end of the known world and tipping over the side. It's the dry season now, thus the impression of many little falls. Evidently in the wet season that broad expanse of water deepens by geometric proportions, thus turning this rock-scape into the widest continuous falls in the world. The water then churns at the bottom of this gash in the rock, then eventually flows out through another deep gorge. In dry season you see the drama and depth of the stone, but less water. At the flood, the guides said it's so loud, and sends up so much mist, that it's tough to see anything. They say you should see both for the complete experience, and that our best view will be when we get up in the helicopters.

After a quick break we had an outdoor dinner on the lawns of the hotel, awed by a night sky darker than I'd seen in years. I'm not sure who was more entertaining, the monkeys in the trees who were clearly plotting to steal our dinners, or the jazz saxophonist sending a bit of mellow sophistication into the African night.