This weekend I went down to Livingstone in the south of Zambia to stay with my friend Ginny, another VSO volunteer I met when she was visiting Kabwe during my first week. Livingstone is the Zambian base for Victoria Falls which I last visited from the Zimbabwean side TWENTY years ago! So I was really excited to go back and see the other half.
We started Saturday morning with a run around Livingstone and could see the spray from the Falls even though it's 11km away! With the rainy season only just over, they're at their fullest so when Ginny said we'd need to hire a poncho I knew it was going to be very dramatic but still wasn't quite prepared for the sheer force of the water. It brought every sense to life - the smell, sound, feeling and taste (unavoidable when your jaw is dropped in amazement at the same time as getting soaked) really added to the incredible sight. After exploring from the opposite side of the gorge we then went and looked down from above where some (crazy) people were swimming. Even more crazy were the people we watched bungee jump from the Victoria Falls bridge. Apparently the bungee snapped for some poor adrenalin-junkie in January and they had to swim their way out of the gorge with their feet tied together. All for the bargain price of $120 (but hoping they got their money back!)
We rounded off the day with sundowners on the deck in front of the Zambezi river at the Royal Livingstone hotel. African sunsets are something I'm really going to miss. The sky is somehow bigger out here. I'm reading a book at the moment called "Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko" and one of the characters talks about feeling like he's going to bump his head on the sky when he visits the UK. But when I look at sunsets like this, it's as if the sky goes on forever...
We started Saturday morning with a run around Livingstone and could see the spray from the Falls even though it's 11km away! With the rainy season only just over, they're at their fullest so when Ginny said we'd need to hire a poncho I knew it was going to be very dramatic but still wasn't quite prepared for the sheer force of the water. It brought every sense to life - the smell, sound, feeling and taste (unavoidable when your jaw is dropped in amazement at the same time as getting soaked) really added to the incredible sight. After exploring from the opposite side of the gorge we then went and looked down from above where some (crazy) people were swimming. Even more crazy were the people we watched bungee jump from the Victoria Falls bridge. Apparently the bungee snapped for some poor adrenalin-junkie in January and they had to swim their way out of the gorge with their feet tied together. All for the bargain price of $120 (but hoping they got their money back!)
We rounded off the day with sundowners on the deck in front of the Zambezi river at the Royal Livingstone hotel. African sunsets are something I'm really going to miss. The sky is somehow bigger out here. I'm reading a book at the moment called "Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko" and one of the characters talks about feeling like he's going to bump his head on the sky when he visits the UK. But when I look at sunsets like this, it's as if the sky goes on forever...
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| Working the poncho look with Ginny |
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| Rainbows in the spray |
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| Double rainbows over the "boiling pot" |
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| Victoria Falls Bridge. Spot the teeny tiny bungee jumper on bottom left of picture |
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| Enjoying a break from the spray with hood down! |
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| At the very end of the Falls |
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| Wise words! |
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| Looking down from above the Falls |
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| Sundowners at the Royal Livingstone hotel |
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