Zambia - Victoria Falls

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Zambia (10 June 2011 to 13 June 2011)

Next morning with our lunches packed once again, we headed to the airport for our flight to Zambia. Flying a low cost airline, “1time”, we didn’t want to take chances so went way ahead of time, grabbed a sandwich, muffin and a coffee at the airport and boarded the plane to Victoria Falls.

Livingstone airport was a tiny quaint place with bizarre amounts of checking and immigration formalities into the country. Our pick-up from the hotel “The Waterfront” awaited us and we reached the same in about 20 minutes. Checked in, had our lunch and headed out to plan our activities there. After booking for the tour of the falls and the micro-light flight for the next day we roamed around the property and settled by the deck next to the pool to look at the Sun set by the mighty river Zambezi.

Next morning we were picked up at the reception for the tour of the Victoria Falls. Zambezi, 3,540-kilometre-long river has its source in Zambia and flows through Angola, along the borders of Namibia, Botswana, Zambia again, and Zimbabwe, to Mozambique, where it empties into the Indian Ocean.

David Livingstone was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and explorer in Africa. He was the first European to see the Mosi-oa-Tunya ("the smoke that thunders") waterfall which he renamed Victoria Falls after his monarch, Queen Victoria, of which he wrote , "Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."

Over at least 1000,000 years, the falls have been receding upstream through the Batoka Gorges, eroding the sandstone-filled cracks to form the gorges. The river's course in the current vicinity of the falls is north to south, so it opens up the large east-west cracks across its full width, then it cuts back through a short north-south crack (known as the Devil's Cataract) to the next east-west one. The Victoria falls is estimated to make a shift every 50,000 years thus making the present falls the 8th such shifted falls. The Devil’s Cataract marks the beginning of the ninth Victoria Falls that is to be formed.

With the rainbow over the falls and the water spray showering over us we walked 1.5 KM along the width of the falls (remaining 0.2 KM being part of Zimbabwe, is not accessible from the Zambian side). Breath-taking is the only word which can even remotely describe what we saw before us. The majesty and beauty of the falls is out of the world! Niagara maybe of a kind but Victoria Falls is of a totally different level.

Later that day we once again had some rice meal – cooked in the kettle (!!) and felt that it was simply extraordinary except that it lacked curd at the end!!! So we took the free shuttle from the resort to the town in search of some plain yogurt! Heat was on our head and we roamed the little town only to realize that yogurt will be available only at Spar, right next our resort!! Ran back to the staff bus which had brought us into town and was carrying back staff to the resort & got dropped at Spar. The currency in Zambia is Kwacha which trades at 4600 Kwachas amounting to 1 USD!!! Hilarity ensuing, we picked up 2 big cartons of yogurt for 20,000 Kwachas and decided to head back to the resort by foot.

During our drive to the town, Spar seemed walk-able from the resort but when we actually did it we realized it about 6 KM away and the sun was burning down on us, we took a wrong turn, re-traced our path, headed in the right direction and after almost half an hour we were still 3 KM from the resort!! Thankfully a cab came down that road and we got a ride back for 15,000 Kwachas!!

Sun burnt and tired we headed to our room to get ready for our micro light flight. Micro-light flying was at a place called Batoka Sky. On reaching the place there was a waiting time of about 15 minutes. In the meanwhile I wanted to get some pictures with the African live musician there. On making a request to get a picture with him he offered to teach me how to play his instrument!!! I learnt to play “Waka Waka” with him while Madhu got some lovely videos of the same!!



It was then time for the flight. Flight duration ranges from 15 to 30 minutes which offers stunning views of Victoria Falls and the Zambezi River. They have a unique wing-mounted camera which enables clients to capture this exciting experience on film. There are restrictions that apply on the micro-light - a minimum age of six years and maximum mass of 100kg. Aerial view of the falls is a fascinating experience - after the morning visit of the Falls we didnt expect something to be better than that but it was!! It was completely different perspective of the falls..

We both had friendly German pilots. While Madhu’s pilot taught him to navigate the flight mine gave me full history and geography class on Victoria Falls!!! We also spotted some elephants and hippopotamus by the river water from the micro-light.



Victoria Falls was explored and it was now time to head back the next morning. As we waiting for our airport drop we clicked some last minute pictures by the river and finally got to the airport. Livingstone Airport was unbelievably chaotic! Worse than possibly the worst Indian airports.. No system, no sequence, no security!! There was a queue with at least 80 odd people before us and Madhu actually managed to bribe one of the airport staff to get us through!!! Security check was horrid and overall one hell of an experience!

Jo’burg was it usual jittering cold self and we checked into the airport hotel – The City Lodge for the night. It was by far the best place we had stayed in Jo’burg, including Sun City! For a change it was like a star rated hotel with nice ambience, good breakfast, a fine room and a spacious wash room! We finished our VAT refund and re-packing and left for our flight to Abu Dhabi the next morning.

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