Victoria Falls and Rafting the Zambezi

I know this is quite late because I have already been home for some time, but I still want to take the opportunity to write about the rest of my trip.

After my amazing experience in Chobe National Park, I wasn’t sure that anything on the rest of this trip could compare. Victoria Falls provided a different flavor than other parts of the trip.  It was the first and only visit to Zimbabwe during the trip.  Our first day in Zimbabwe began with the border crossing into Zimbabwe from Botswana.  This border crossing took a bit longer than previous crossings because all of us were required to purchase visas in order to gain entrance into Zimbabwe.  The processing of visas for 24 people takes some time, so we were probably there about an hour and a half, which was pretty quick considering how many of us there were.

After successfully crossing the border, we made it to Victoria Falls National Park shortly before noon.  It is difficult to describe Victoria Falls and do it justice.  It was truly a beautiful sight and absolutely huge!  You couldn’t see the entire falls from one viewpoint.  It had at least 15 viewpoints along the falls, and you really had to visit most of them to see the falls in its entirety.  The main falls was probably my favorite, as it was just an immense wall of roaring water.  Though it was winter and therefore low water season in Zimbabwe, the main falls still had a lot of water going over it.  There were some viewpoints where it was difficult to take pictures because of all of the mist.  I got completely soaked just because of the water off of the falls.  I can’t imagine what it is like during the high water season.  However, there were some gaps throughout the falls where there was less or no water flowing over the falls.  However, I found that some of the prettier parts of the falls were those with less water coming over them.  We ate our lunch on some rocks that overlooked the falls.  It was a very beautiful place to see.

The second day at Victoria Falls was a free day to enjoy one of the many activities available in the town.  Victoria Falls is known as a place for adventure seekers.  It offers everything from bungee jumping to helicopter flights over the falls.  The previous day we went into the adventure center to learn about the activities offered and book them if desired.  I was hesitant at first to do any of these activities, but I really had my eye on white water rafting.  I have always wanted to go white water rafting, but I was hesitant because the Zambezi River has category five rapids, which are one of the highest levels that commercial rafting trips will traverse.  There was a category six rapid on this river, but all of the rafting companies walk around it because it is dangerous.  For an inexperienced rafter such as myself, the category five rapids can be quite daunting.  However, six other people from my tour group were doing it, so I was convinced to join the fun.  However, I did not tell my mom about it until after the rafting trip was finished, because she did not want me to do it and would have constantly worried about it.

On the morning of rafting I was extremely excited, but also very nervous.  Though safety was a priority from the company, and we wore both helmets and lifejackets, my mind tended to go to worst case scenarios of falling out of the boat, or hitting a rock, etc.  In reality, the water is high enough that hitting a rock would be really rare.  There were only really a couple of rapids where I could see exposed rock in the rapid, and we skipped both of those.

The rafting trip began with a walk down to the bottom of the gorge.  This did very little to ease my nerves, as we pretty much walked down steps with see-through grating straight down the gorge to the river.  One of the pictures shows some of my friends walking down the steps.  Once we reached the bottom we were loaded onto the raft.  My raft consisted of seven people from my tour group, including myself, plus the rafting guide.  Some of the rafts had a guide who had two oars and therefore controlled more of the power and steering of the raft.  We were not in one of those rafts so we did all of the hard core paddling with directions shouted by our guide when we needed to turn, etc.

We made it through the first couple of rapids with relative ease.  They ranged from categories 2-3.  However, I got quite a bit of an adrenaline rush from the first couple of rapids because they were the first ones I had ever encountered.  After those rapids I started to feel a bit more comfortable.  Then the big ones started to come.  I won’t talk about every single rapid because it would take way too long, and honestly, some were more memorable than others.  However, you can look at the map for all of the names of the rapids, because even some of the less memorable ones had really fun names.  The first rapid of note was rapid #4, known as Morning Glory.  This one was a category 4 and our first taste of a big rapid.  I don’t remember much about this one except for that as we were cheering when we made it through without flipping over, one person in our raft said that she had hurt her ankle.  She had turned it over in the boat while getting down into the raft during the rough part of the rapid.  It is hard to describe what really happened because it was kind of a weird accident, but we found out later that she had broken a bone in her leg near the ankle.  Keep in mind that this was on rapid #4 and she made it all the way through rapid #10 before going back up the gorge with the people on the half day rafting tour while we continued on.  I don’t think I could have done that!

The next rapid was one of the scariest and our first category 5 rapid, known as Stairway to Heaven.   The name is pretty fitting, considering it is pretty much your raft heaving itself over a flight of stairs!  I would describe it as dropping over a miniature waterfall and then getting pummeled by water at the bottom.  It was incredibly scary, but extremely exhilarating!  Our rafting guide said that we had about a 50:50 shot of flipping our raft over, and we didn’t flip over, so we had a big celebration after that rapid.

We walked around two rapids in the first half of the trip.  One was Gulliver’s Travels, which has some exposed rocks.  We almost accidently went through that one because we weren’t paddling hard enough towards the shore, and momentarily got sort of caught between a couple of rocks.  However, we were able to get ourselves out of it.  After that incident we were sure to put a lot of extra effort into our paddling.  Some rafting companies would take their rafts through Gulliver’s Travels, and almost every one flipped over as we watched them go through as we walked along the shore.  I’m glad that we didn’t try to run that one.  The other one we walked around was a category 6 rapid known as Commercial Suicide because going through it would be “bad for business” as our guide told us.  All of the rafting companies had clients walk around that one.

There are also a couple of rapids in the second half of the trip I would like to talk about.  We were told that the second half of the trip was not nearly as bad as the first half in terms of difficulty and potential for flipping over the raft.  I would say that was generally true, but the guide probably should have saved that talk for after the particular sequence that I am going to describe, rapids 12 and 13.

Rapid 12 actually consists of three rapids, which are together known as the Ugly Sisters.  These three rapids are one right after the other and then are immediately followed by rapid number 13, known as The Mother.  So basically, we went through four rapids in a row with little to no break between rapids.  Up until this point we would have a long stretch of calm water between rapids, so this was a new challenge for us.  We made it through the first ugly sister, a category 3, with few problems.  It was a fun rapid and nobody fell down into the boat on it and we paddled through it quite well.  The problems started with the second ugly sister, which was supposedly a category 2 rapid.  As we went through the rapid a huge wave of water lifted the left side of the boat up, almost flipping the boat over!  As the boat was lifted up I fell off of my seat on the left side of the boat and flew across the boat slamming into its right side and bouncing off of it back into the boat.  It was a good thing I had the other side of the boat to stop me or I would have flown right out of the boat.  One of the girls on the right side of the boat fell out and into the water.  Luckily she stayed next to the boat so the guide was able to pull her right back in.  Afterwards we asked how that was a category two rapid and he said it was maybe more like a two and a half.  The third ugly sister was a category 1 and we got through it easily.  You know it’s an easy rapid when the guide doesn’t even give you instructions on what direction to swim in if you fall out of the raft.  I think it was expected that we wouldn’t fall out.

Immediately after the Ugly Sisters came the most exciting, frightening, and difficult rapid of the afternoon, The Mother.  I think that the video I have attached here is of our run down the last ugly sister and this rapid, but I am not positive.  Just as a warning there are a few choice swear words in this video, because that reaction tends to happen when you head towards massive waves of water.  My friend Elis from the tour had a waterproof camera on the trip, so he was able to provide some great pictures and video.  It is hard to tell what exactly is going on in the video, but here is what I remember about this rapid.  As we approached the Mother, our guide was yelling us to keep paddling forward.  We were pretty determined to do this until we saw the beginning of the rapid and started going down it.  You can hear a few of us scream in the background of the video.  At this point most of us were just kind of like, nope, paddling isn’t going to happen, and ducked down into the boat and held on for dear life.  I was definitely one of those people.  As we crashed into the water, the force bumped me onto my back.  Then, as I sat up, we approached a wave of water which pushed the boat up to nearly a vertical angle!  I thought for sure we were going to flip over, but Elis’s quick thinking to put all of his weight at the front of the boat saved us from flipping.  I’m pretty sure this corresponds to the point in the video where everything turns chaotic.  After that rapid we were all completely wound up and relieved that we had made it through at the same time.  This sequence of rapids was without a doubt the highlight of the rafting trip for me.

One more rapid of note was the Washing Machine.  We were told to paddle right as hard as possible so that we would go to the side of the Washing Machine instead of inside it.  We were extra motivated because he said if you go through the spin cycle of the Washing Machine there was no chance of getting through the rapid without falling out of the boat.  And yes, the Washing Machine looked exactly how it sounds like it would look.  Luckily, we were motivated and strong enough to avoid the center of this rapid and made it through safely.

After our adventure through rapids 1-19, we had to walk up to the top of the gorge.  This was probably the worst part of the trip because you had basically paddled constantly for almost five hours straight with very little drinking water and then had to walk straight up a cliff.  Let’s just say my adrenaline kind of wore off half way up the cliff and the second half was a bit of a struggle.  However, lunch and cold drinks were waiting at the top, so we were rewarded at the end of the hike.

Rafting the Zambezi is definitely an experience I’ll never forget.  It definitely was not a relaxing day.  We all had to work very hard for several hours to keep our boat upright and moving.  In the end, we were a successful raft because we worked as a team.  I think it helped that we were all friends who had been on tour together.  Our raft didn’t flip over once, and we only had one person fall out of the boat, which was a pretty big accomplishment.  It was one of the most exciting and scary things I have ever done.  I am so glad that I took advantage of the opportunity.

All photo and video credits go to Elis, who was awesome enough to take some pictures and videos of the experience with his waterproof camera!

The girls of the group before rafting. 

Walking on the shore around rapid #9

Walking down the scary steps to the river!

Proof that I was actually in the raft!

A view from the raft

  I don’t think I would necessarily recommend these particular rapids for beginners such as myself, and I think that rafting this river truly was a once in a lifetime experience.  I probably will not raft this river again and I kind of think I want to stick to category 4 and below from now on.  It would probably make my mom less nervous.  However, I am looking forward to trying out more whitewater rafting on different rivers in the future, and who knows; maybe I will decide to try some category 5 rapids again in the future!

Also, here is a link with a cartoon map of the rapids with all of their fun names! https://www.afrizim.com/Image/maps/zimbabwe/victoria-falls/Batoka_Gorge.jpg