When we were in South Africa, planning our route northward, we discarded Zimbabwe as an option.  Wikitravel and Lonely Planet painted a grim picture of the country, warning us of empty gas stations, food shortages, dangerous animal on the roads, and health care nightmares. (We read somewhere that the best thing you can do if you’re injured or sick is to get the hell out of Zimbabwe as fast as possible.  For all intents and purposes, they claimed, there was no health care for tourists in Zimbabwe.)  We hadn’t been in Africa long and I’m sad to say that we succumbed to our own fears.

By the time we were ready to move on from Botswana, we’d met other tourists who passed through Zimbabwe and had long conversations with our Okavango riverboat captain and first mate, both from Zimbabwe.  Everyone assured us that, yes, Zimbabwe is still recovering and has its share of problems.  On the other hand, there are many worthwhile sights to see and tourists are very welcome.

As for the food shortages and gas scarcity, I got the impression it was much like going camping in the Alaskan wilderness: Go prepared and everything will be fine.

We did go to Zimbabwe, but only for a day and just to see the other side of Victoria Falls.  Turned out to be a memorable day, however, as we ended up going on an elephant-back safari ride, too.  Obviously we didn’t get to see a whole lot of the country, but I did learn a thing or two while we were there.

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We didn’t realize how large Zambia was until we bussed across it.  The whole reason for visiting was to see Victoria Falls, which is in the south.  Since we entered from Namibia, we didn’t have that far to go to reach our destination.  Our plan afterward was to climb (or at least see) Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, which is on Zambia’s northern border.  Getting there was a nightmare.

Our first bus from Livingstone to the capital, Lusaka, was only six hours.  The following day we decided to push all the way to Dar es Salaam.  We spent 34 hours on that next bus, with the same four Thai martial arts movies on a loop and no air conditioning.  It just about did us in.

Before all that, however, we spent about a week in Livingstone.  Being such a tourist hotspot, it was more comfortable (read: wealthy) than most of Zambia and we enjoyed our time there.  Most of my observations are from that area; I expect things where much different in the rural parts of the country.
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