Victoria Falls was one of my bucket list items – along with all the other Seven Natural Wonders.. Making my way to Victoria Falls means I have successfully seen over half of them. This is a personally adventure post but here is a detailed guide to visiting Victoria Falls.
What is Victoria Falls?
Victoria Falls or Mosi-oa-Tunya (Tonga language: The Smoke That Thunders), is a majestic waterfall along the Zambezi River that separates Zambia and Zimbabwe. One of Earth’s great spectacles, Victoria Falls, is 355 feet high and a mile wide, and with an average flow of 33,000 cubic feet per second. This creates a magnet attracting people from all over the world come who make the pilgrimage to see one of the Seven Natural Wonders.
My Adventure
I was fortunate enough to be passed a contact with a local I could stay with while visiting Victoria Falls. His name was Paul Teasdale and seriously made my trip that much better. If you’re interested in staying with him at Victoria Falls then you can drop him a line here. My friend and I had planned to stay with Paul for three nights.
Visiting Victoria Falls
After flying in, my friend and I were dropped off by Paul to Victoria Falls. The National Park has several viewpoints that bring you up close and personal with 2/3 of the Zimbabwe side of Victoria Falls. We opted out of rain gear and decided to just get soaked by the falls. The National Park has a neatly straight forward path that gives you access to Devil’s Cataract, Main Falls, Horseshoe Falls, and the picture famous Rainbow Falls. After spending a couple hours at the falls, we made our way back to Paul’s house.
That night, we all went out to dinner at a place called The Three Monkeys. After eating crocodile and chocolate pizza, Paul was kind enough to take us on a little night adventure looking for hyenas.
Instead of find hyenas, we got cut off by elephants and saw a puff head snake. Paul also took us to a few of his favorite spots along the river so we could search for crocodiles. We ended the night by sitting in a tree stand on his family friend’s property. Here you could see every star in the galaxy it seemed. It felt like we locked ourselves in a closet known as the Milky Way Galaxy and could see every part she had to display. It was pretty amazing.
Thrill Seeking Day in Victoria Falls
The next day my travel partner decided she wanted to do something extreme. She initially came to Victoria Falls to bungee jump but in the end decided to do the gorge swing. Her reasoning was pricing and was told by a few insiders that the view is much more worth it from the swing. The gorge swing allows you to jump off one side of the Zambezi and swing over to the other cliff while coming so close to the river you can feel the roaring.
After she took the leap of faith, we celebrated at the nearby cafe, Wild Horizon Lookout Cafe. Here we enjoyed a nice lunch that provides one of the best views of the Zambezi River in my opinion. Definitely worth making a trip here to enjoy the view.
Rafting the Zambezi River
Our last full day was reserved for rafting the Zambezi River. I was told this was the one adventurous activity we had to do. White water rafting along the Zambezi River is world famous and I didn’t want to miss out. The same place my travel partner did the gorge swing is where we decided to do the rafting. We were going to spend our entire day rafting down the Zambezi.
Unfortunately we had the smaller group who wasn’t the greatest. One guy decided to not really contribute while another lady was too scared and just sat in the back. This left the rest of us to do a bunch of work which became exhausting pretty quickly. About half way through, one guy fell out and took me down with him. Overall though, it was still a fun experience.
The end of our trip we were provided a really nice lunch and refreshments for a bit while we rested. Where we had lunch were local hand craftsman that were selling their wooden carved goods. Here was an interesting chance to speak to locals who weren’t constantly haggling you to buy their goods. Finally, we were brought home where we collapsed from exhaustion into our bed.
Flying out of Livingstone, Zambia
The next day, we had to cross into Zambia to catch out flight out of Livingstone. We left four hours before out flight to make our way to Livingstone. Cross the border was pretty simple as we already had our Kaza Visa that allowed us to enter Zambia and Zimbabwe under one visa. After leaving Zimbabwe, we checked into the Zambia border which was easy but time-consuming. Everything in Africa is always at its own pace.
After getting to the Livingstone Airport we quickly made our way through security to wait in the check-in line. The line actually had me somewhat nervous of missing out flight as it took quite awhile to make it through. We made it about twenty minutes till boarding and was allowed to enter the departure waiting area. It was time to say our goodbyes to Victoria Falls and the amazing adventure we shared.