THE MIGHTY ZAMBEZI

Wow, what a river! Brilliant rapids as well as fab names for the rapids such as Oblivion, Terminator, Seventh Heaven and Devil’s Toilet Bowl to name a few. Most were class 4 and 5 but there were a few class 3 rapids, which seemed to be tacked on to the larger rapids as 11a, 11b and 11c if you looked at them from a number standpoint. Given that, I have no idea exactly how many rapids we did go over but the official number was 21 in a 28 km stretch of the river. After walking a very broken stairwell and slippery rock face down into the canyon, we put in just at the end of Victoria Falls. The falls are low this time of year so it makes it possible, otherwise we would have missed rapids #1-4. For the most part, we stayed in the boat and only flipped once. Thankfully the one flip we did was not in the Devil’s Toilet Bowl as it really did earn the name, which supposedly was from the whirlpool in the middle that sucked people under for a bit and then spat them out, but in reality, I believe it was from the nasty stench in the pooling water off to the right at the end of the rapid. Everything that had come down the river seemed to have pooled there. Our one flip was, of course, incredibly gracefully – Renee, who was up in front, toppled back into me, smacking me in the mouth and dumping me into Todd, who fell out with the two of us right on top of him. Renee and Todd managed to clear the boat while, after three attempts, I still found myself under the boat in a gurgling, foaming dark cave. It did get a bit unnerving after coming up the third time and not quite knowing when to open my mouth, getting half water and half air and discovering that I was still under the darn boat. Thankfully I have a well rafted father who was good enough to take me on several trips with him, so I kept my wits about me, continued to reach for the rope and pulled myself out and clear. Ahh, fresh air never felt so good, well, maybe it did after I had jumped my 70 meters into the gorge and realized that the rope was still holding me. To top it all off, we saw several crocs hanging out on the rocks as we rafted by so you felt none too safe just hanging out in the water. Story is that these crocs fall off of the falls at a very young age, survive the massive fall, rocks and churning water at the base of the falls and then end up pushed down river a bit where they survive on smaller fish and don’t quite grow up enough to bother with us humans. They really didn’t look that big so we all comforted ourselves with that story – what do we know anyway? Supposedly there has only ever been one death off of Vic Falls as well but each story I heard was different so that pretty much gives it away that there has definitely been more than one. We finished the day with a very healthy (read strenuous) hike back out of the gorge, beers, sodas and an awfully chilly ride back to Vic Falls in an open top safari truck. Needless to say my body was less than thrilled with me after the adrenaline rushing gorge swing jumps and a day of being tossed about a river followed by a cold, wet, ride back to town.

Had phenomenal rain showers and thunder storms that night and we all cowered in various people’s rooms, the bar or the truck until it passed. So with the nice fresh crispness of the rain still hanging in the air, I turned in early to let my poor body repair itself with a good nights sleep.