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Published: October 5th 2008
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On arrival at the Waterfront Resort in Livingstone, we were introduced to all the activities available to us and after some “Wooooh, that looks awesome, Fair Dunkum Ya Flamin’ Galaaaar” from real life Alf Stewart/Joe Scully hybrid, Simon, we were persuaded to do the rafting with a few of the crew. We also booked up for a microlight flight over the falls and I booked for the gorge swing, which was first after our visit to the falls the following morning.
When we arrived at the falls we both had a kind of “Is that it?” thought as although it was the end of the dry season, we still expected to see more water! It was still pretty stunning though, and we could imagine that the falls lived up to their name “the Smoke That Thunders” during high water. The gorge swing was next. Myself, Simon and his better half Sarah were all booked and Lizzie tagged along in case she fancied it later on. Simon went first and stepped off for the 55metre freefall with a Tarzan like Chewbacca noise, which was pretty manly compared to my girlie puppy like whimper as my breath disappeared from my lungs about
10metres off the ledge! After seeing this, Lizzie decided to have a go and despite me stepping backwards on my second turn (resulting in a 360 degrees death leap), she stepped off that ledge with no effort or stress putting my whimpering girly efforts to deep, deep shame.
The Microlight flight the following morning was one of the highlights of the trip so far, and we were up in the air by 7:30am. Lizzie “Goose” Fell went up first followed by Ian “Maverick” Morgan and then Ian “Ice Man” Maybank, also from the tour. All of us stepped off smiling like Totten at an Irish Jig convention after seeing elephants, hippos and crocodiles in the Zambezi from the seat of a flying hairdryer just a few hundred feet up. My German pilot Heimlich (Hans, Jurgen, not sure) let me start the descent of the microlight, which was awesome and I flew it for a couple of minutes before he took over to bring us down safely.
That night we were due to stop at Fawlty Towers after our official stay with Acacia drew to a close, but we met back up with them that evening for a few
beers. There was a local band on and the Dancing Leprechaun, Becca, challenged me to a dance off. It was like Michael Jackson against Bubbles but this time Bubbles won and I came away victorious after throwing shapes not seen since the days of Mr Wobble on Playdays. Lizzie wasn’t happy as she’d missed the performance and would have to wait until the wedding in Jo’Burg for a repeat performance (although I’d saved some moves to keep it fresh).
Wednesday morning was the time for an all dayer on the Zambezi, with Lizzie, Simon, Sarah, Becca, Adam, Petra, Jemma, Ice Man Maybank and myself heading to the falls with Scott, our welsh dragon token white guy guide. The first half of the day we hit up to grade 5 rapids (we were only insured up to grade 4, it was pretty gnarly!) and Lizzie came out early on and was unscathed after being pretty petrified of the whole thing anyway. She showed she had bigger man bits than most of us and soldiered on until we hit rapid number 8, “The Muncher”. Needless to say, we got munched. Big time. We flipped over, which isn’t the worst bit, then
took an age to come back to the surface amongst just white foam when you open your eyes. Then, just as you’re about to take another breath, another wave smashes into you until you’ve swallowed enough water to irrigate an entire Norfolk farm. This seemed to go on for an age until we all settled down the river and helped each other into the raft happy to be alive!
We negotiated a total of 24 rapids ranging from “The Terminator” to “The Washing Machine” to “The Mother”, coming out a bit bumped and bruised but generally ok, even after the sighting of a few crocs while still scrambling to get back in the raft.
This was to be our final real experience of Africa, and we were both a bit gutted to be leaving, especially after having to stop for a family of elephants to cross the road ahead of us on our taxi ride home. Next stop, Jo’Burg, the wedding and Cape Town!!!!
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demelza and Adam
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We hate you!
Its another boring Monday morning here at Clinovia. To entertain ourselves we thought we would look what you have been up to? And after seeing you in the sunshine getting up to action packed fun while we are stuck here...YES WE HATE YOU! Only joking, we love you really lol Glad you're having a great time, keep the blogs coming Mwah ps your fantasy team sucks!!!!!