The Victoria Falls are
shared between Zimbabwe and neighbouring Zambia and are one of the
seven natural wonders of the world. They are a spectacular sight and
a must-see destination on any trip to southern Africa.
Declared a World Heritage Site, the falls – and much of the
town of the same name – fall within a 23.4 sq km national
park, which neighbours the 573sq km Zambezi National Park.
The falls are the stuff of legends, romance and myth. Long before
the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone “discovered”
the falls in 1855, the local Batonga people had named them Mosi-Oa-Tunya - the smoke that thunders.
The more prosaic Livingstone named them for his queen, but departed
from his normally pedestrian writing to observe in his diary that “scenes
so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.”
A network of trails leads through the rainforest surrounding the smoke
that thunders. Hire an umbrella and raincoat, and happily spend a
day or longer simply gazing at the incredible vistas of one of the
natural wonders of the world. On the Zimbabwe side you look directly
across at the falls, unlike the Zambian side where you are on the
same side as the falls.
Both views are worth seeing, so if you’ve got time
nip across the border to the other side too. The falls thunder over
a wide basalt cliff transforming the Zambezi from a placid river to
a torrent of rapids cutting through 8km of dramatic gorges. The falls are 1.7km
wide with a vertical drop of over 100 metres.
When the river is at its lowest, as little as 20 000 cubic metres
per minute flow over the lip of the falls, but when the mighty Zambezi
is raging in April and May, as much as 500 000 cubic metres a minute
smash down into the Devil’s Cataract below, and then power
through the Batoka Gorge.
There are a number of activities centred around the falls and the
gorge, from white water rafting to abseiling, and Victoria Falls is
without doubt the adrenalin capital of Africa.
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