Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls straddles the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, and while most of the falls are on the Zambia side, the better view is from the Zimbabwe side. After crossing the border with our truck on a giant barge, we were greeted with a chaos that was completely different from the relative order and tranquility of Botswana. We’d been warned that bringing a car in to Zambia was a bureaucratic nightmare, so we hired a local guy (which turned in to two local guys) to help us out. After over an hour, visits to 5 different offices, and around $100 we finally got ourselves and our vehicle cleared in to the country.

From the border crossing it was a short drive to Livingstone, which is a cool little town packed with hostels and tourists flocking here for the the myriad of extreme activities on offer, in addition the falls themselves. After a cruise on the river and a fun night out at a local club, we spent our first full day doing a pretty intense white water rafting trip down the Zambezi river. We shared the raft with a really fun group from South Africa and had a blast. Here’s a video of the trip.

The following day we visited Livingstone Island and Devil’s Pool, which is basically a pool that you can hang out in right at the edge of the falls. It was a little bit terrifying but definitely a great way to get the blood flowing in the morning.


The next day we went to the Zimbabwe side, which was a bit of a disappointment. Where as on the Zambia side there was very little hocking (people hassling you to buy stuff on the street), in Zimbabwe it was rampant. In addition, Zimbabwe uses the US dollar so it was easily the most expensive country we had visited in Africa though you didn’t get anything particularly good for your money. We ended up only spending a day here to see the falls and then got back on the road to South Africa.