vic falls

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After one night in Kasane, a town on the outskirts of Chobe, with a bed and food not cooked on a campfire, bliss, we headed into Zambia. Kasane is the border where we crossed over into Zambia, via a small car ferry to take us the stones throw over the Zambezi river, into Zambia. On the Botswana side it was quite organised and straight forward, not so on the Zambia side. Chaos doesn’t even describe it, basically lots of people, huts and sheds which were customs, road tax, insurance, road tolls, and emissions tax all of which had to purchased. 2 hot, long, dusty hours later we were ready to head to Livingstone, the home of the mighty Victoria Falls.

The falls are immense. It is the dry season here at the moment so they did not have that much water flowing down them compared to in the wet season. You could see though the area where they do fall which made you realise just how big they are. In the section where it was flowing you could see why the locals call them ‘the smoke that thunders’, there was a rainbow coming off the mist when we were there too which was very picturesque. Apparently in the wet season you can’t get close to the falls without being soaked wet through which you could easily imagine. The area surrounding the falls the gorges and rivers is very impressive to see too.

We spent a few days in this area doing white water rafting, abseiling, the flying fox and the gorge swing. The white water rafting was our favourite activity by far. It was a beautiful setting in the Zambezi river surrounded by the gorge with the falls on the other side of you. You had to hike into the gorge and out of it. The rapids were fantastic, we managed not to flip but came very close at the end of one of the rapids the raft had alot water in the bottom.

The abseiling, flying fox and gorge swing were done in another part of the gorge, and on a different day I think there is a limit as to how much adrenalin you can have in one day! The flying fox is basically an aerial runway across the top of the gorge which you are harnessed to so you just run and jump and it takes you to one side and then back, the views were pretty amazing. The gorge swing was a different story, no time for appreciating the view! It is basically a bungee jump and swing combined. You drop vertically at 146 km per hour and then swing from one side to the other. We did it twice, not sure why, first time by ourselves and the second time together. It was actually worse together as you had to go backwards (Louise tried to wuss out as the guy was counting us down to fall of the platform backwards but she pulled herself together and we did it on the second attempt)
. After a day of that we had to settle our nerves so went on a ‘booze cruise’ along the Zambezi river. Too much free drink resulted in swimming in the pool fully clothed back at the lodge!

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Comments

[Emma McClement]

ooooo pretty
Hiya I saw i had an update to look at! Those pics are sooooo pretty with the rainbow on the spray. you were so brave cos i would never jump or abseil or anything like that. Maybe i am just a big old chicken! Em