The travels of Tim and Megan: Africa Safari: Zimbabwe

Day 37: Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

On Sunday, we woke at 6.30am, not feeling great after a lousy night's sleep. At 7.30am, Neena joined the two of us on a visit to the Victoria Falls waterfall. It was a decent walk down to the waterfall and it was already hot, although there were not many annoying street vendors hassling us and, by going early, we avoided the crowds at the Falls.

Victoria Falls is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Locally known as "the smoke that thunders", the waterfall is situated on the Zambezi River between the countries of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Falls are 1.7km wide and 108m high at the centre. The average flow of water over the Falls is 1,088 cubic metres per second. That is a lot of water.

We arrived at the Falls around 8am and had a slow, leisurely stroll from one end of the Falls right to the other end. The beginning of the walking track had a large statue of David Livingstone. Livingstone, the famous Scottish missionary and explorer, is believed to have been the first European recorded to view the Victoria Falls. Livingstone gave the Falls the name "Victoria Falls" in honour of his Queen.

The waterfall was so incredibly beautiful. There was a fine mist in the air (like that spray that keeps the fruit cool in the produce section of the supermarket), which kept us cool. On the side of the walkway opposite the Falls, there was a beautiful garden, thick with exotic looking trees and plants and some bright red flowers that looked a little like pohutakawa flowers.

It was not the high water time of the year, so the Falls were not as full as they can be, but they were absolutely spectacular. The noise of the Falls was quite breath-taking. It really does "thunder". We spent around two hours there. After we got to the end of the path, we walked all the way back along the path the the start, taking loads of photos as we went. There were much bigger crowds coming through by the time we finished.

We had a drink at the outdoor cafe by the entrance to the Falls and checked out the gift shop before wandering back to our camp. We were harassed by street vendors on the way back - they kept asking for Tim's shoes and T-shirts. We had lunch at the camping ground restaurant, which was comically called "In Da Belly", and the food was great. It was a lazy afternoon chilling out by the pool, swimming in the pool, and lying in the sun.

Later in the day, we had showers, packed up all of our things, and sheltered from a thunderstorm that rolled in around 5.30pm. There was really heavy rain for quite a while - thankfully we had got the rain sheet on the tent in time and we had put our packs back in the truck. Crafty! We had dinner with Troy and Sara and then had an early night - tomorrow we would enter Botswana with a new crew!