November 2011 - Zambia/Zimbabwe - Victoria Falls

The rainy season caught up with us again after managing to escape it when leaving Rwanda; the days are extremely hot and in the afternoon it pours down, not the best weather for camping but we get rewarded with some psychedelic cloudy skies that seem as if painted, it might be the malaria tablets that act slowly on our system but no matter what it is every afternoon movie time.
We did not spend much time in Zambia and headed quite quickly to its most famous attraction. Despite it being a bit of a detour on the route we decided we could not miss the probably most well-known place on the continent, the Victoria Falls.
The Victoria Falls are formed by the Zambezi River which comes down the Highlands of central Africa; it is the third largest river on the continent, responsible for the formation of the largest waterfall on earth and one of the seven natural wonders of the world (108 meters high and 1700 meters long).
The Zambezi River also forms the natural border between Zambia and Zimbabwe and both countries share the Victoria Falls. On the Zambian side one is walking on top of the falls while on the Zimbabwean side just in front of them. The first white man to discover the falls was Dr Livingstone, the famous explorer, what he must have felt when turning around the last tree or hill on his way and seeing this enormous river falling over the cliff must have been truly something. Nowadays, having seen the fall so many times on TV and pictures this virgin fascination goes missing a tiny bit.
Since it is only the beginning of the rainy season the falls are not at their fullest. For some people a good time to visit for others not the best, but we did with what we got and visited the falls from both sides.
The town of Livingstone on the Zambian side is a lively backpacker and tourist hub that seems to have been built up quickly in the last years to cater for all the visitors. Originally Victoria Falls (the town) on the Zimbabwean side had always been the main centre of activity but since Zimbabwe’s ‘troubles’ for the last years it got rather deserted, slowly however, it is attracting more and more people again. The town itself despite people saying that it has been a left-over is impressively non-African looking, big clean streets, plenty of fancy hotels and shops, beautiful residential areas, houses here do not seem to need fences or bars in front of windows and doors, it feels really safe and makes us look very much forward to seeing the rest of this much spoken about country.
On the Zambian side we walked just along the lip of the fall and swam in one of the pools just before the water falls over the edge. On the Zimbabwean side we stood just in front of the falls and their size became much more noticeable and the whole experience indeed very impressive.
In the Victoria Falls town we stayed in a Backpackers and made friends with a really nice bunch of people with whom we spend some days. The town is considered the adrenaline hub of Africa, it offers all sorts of scary things from bungee jumping, to gorge gliding etc. Luisa opted for the more chilled version of taken advantage of the mighty river by going for a canoeing day, the only adrenaline push came from hippos popping out unexpectedly from under the water and crocs swimming along. Fred on the other hand went for the real thing, rafting down the grade 5 rapids of the Zambezi just beneath the Falls.
Victoria Falls are done and ticked off the list, we move on to some more game viewing, probably the last of the trip... we move on with Sabrina and Ron a German/Dutch couple whom we met, liked and made some space for in Cruisi so that we can travel together for some time. Zimbabwe here we come!