SOUTHERN AFRICA: DAY 7 — ZIMBABWE

White Water Rafting in One of Africa’s Most Dangerous Rivers

On the water of the mighty Zambezi

It’s been one of my most intense experiences and the fondest memories I still have from the falls from my previous visit. Rafting down the mighty Zambezi, falling off the boat several times and snapping for air while being sucked down from the dangerous rapids.

And guess what? I loved it so much, I decided to do it again. Almost eight years later. My expectations might have been high but I knew how much I changed, mentally and physically and I should not expect the same experience again.

Because it was not.

On my previous visit, I was staying at a backpacker’s in Livingstone, on the Zambian side of the falls. I was a solo traveler.

This time I’m here together with my husband. We’re camping on the Zimbabwean side. And we’re back to go white water rafting.

I wanted to book with the same company as I did the previous time but as we are traveling in low season, they did not have a trip going. It was anyway easier to just book with a company that was operating from the Zimbabwean side.

We drove down to the gorge to start at rapid number 11. As the Zambezi River is on a high water level, rapids one to 10 are out for rafting. Too dangerous.

First, we had to hike down the canyon. The dangerous part of the rafting as the guide said and I believe this. The trek was muddy and slippery and we had to hike across roads and large boulders.

Once we got down to the start of the rafting, we just had to jump into the boat the guides had pumped up already. We got a quick introductory lesson on how to paddle and how to respond to the guide’s instructions.

The last part of the practice run was to jump off the boat and into the river. To get rid of the part of getting wet. And to train how to get back into the boat and how to pull someone in.

Then we paddled out of this calm section of the river. And I realized I had no memories of how hard the paddling part of this activity was. But we enjoyed it. After sitting in the car for so long, this was a welcoming exercise.

The first rapid arrived and we were all excited. We paddled hard as the guide instructed and then sat down in the boat and held on as we floated and bounced through the whitewash.

We continued. With lots of excitement and enthusiasm. Paddling through one rapid after the other one.

And while half of the boat was hoping to get thrown off, the rest of the boat was keeping the boat stable with lots of weight in the back. Yes, I was part of the ones who hoped to get thrown off.

I just love adventure. And water.

I'm not sure if the river was calmer this time, we were just more people and that way more stable in the boat, or if I was listening better to instructions than the last time but we all stayed in.

Just one time the guide was saying something like "now we can relax..." And before he finished the sentence, David had thrown himself backward out of the boat.

“Not like that!” the guide quickly added.

We all had a good laugh. Just the guide was telling him to get back in as there were crocs in the river. Yes, we are white water rafting in a river with crocodiles. That story is actually quite interesting.

The crocodiles live upstream of the falls on the Zambezi River. After heavy rains or whenever the river levels do rise, some crocodiles get washed over the Victoria Falls which are about 100 meters high. The big crocodiles obviously die.

But the smaller ones only have soft bones and survive the fall. Then they live below the falls. They don’t go into the rapids but swim in the calmer stretches of the river until the river takes them even further down.

While I’m telling you this, we face the next rapids. Two grade 4 and one grade 5 rapids. That’s the highest-graded rapids that can get rafted here.

We certainly are getting splashed by water and our boat shoots up and down those massive waves. We’re paddling hard and laughing a lot.

Between rapid 18 and 19 is a long stretch with not calm water but slower rapids. The guide says we can go for a swim and before he finished his sentence, half of the boat jumps backward into the water.

He was still saying "stay in the middle" but we barely heard that. The current was strong and trying to swim was nearly impossible. We were floating on our lifejackets wherever the river was taking us.

Now and then, when one of the guides was screaming at us (screaming because it was loud) to come back to the middle, I’d try to paddle with my legs to get back to the middle but with the next whirlpool, I was being thrown around and lost orientation.

There were two stretches in total where we were allowed to swim and those were heaps of fun. We did float through some smaller rapids which did look huge to me who was just with my head above water.

I did swallow some Zambezi water again. So that was fun.

The two South African boys "fell off" in one of the rapids toward the end. I say boys because they were younger than us but they were adults. And I say "fell off" because they just let go of the boat’s safety line and leaned backward until they couldn’t keep their balance anymore.

We let them float through the big rapid and then pulled them back into the boat.

That was already the end of the trip. Now, we had to get back up out of the gorge.

It was a long strenuous climb that made us feel our thighs the following days still. We had to carry our helmet, paddle and lifevest which didn’t make the challenging hike any easier.

But knowing there was beer waiting for us on top made us push through.

Reaching the top, we had once more an amazing view over the canyon where the mighty Zambezi is rushing through. And yes, we survived the river rafting on the most dangerous river in Africa.

They say.

After devouring our certainly delicious lunch with food from the fire including some crocodile meat, we then jumped back into the truck and were heading back.

It had started to rain and being in an open vehicle we started getting cold after half an hour of driving. I didn’t mind the rain while we were rafting but now it was different.

Back at camp we quickly jumped into the hot shower, washed off all that brown river water and relaxed at camp for the rest of the day.

If you would like to read about my previous experience white water rafting at the Victoria Falls, check out this article:

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