Canoeing the Zimbabwean Zambezi – within earshot of the Victoria Falls – without a paddle? It sounded pretty reckless. But within moments of pushing off from the old flying boat dock once known as Jungle Junction, I was a total convert.

If I’d really wanted my own paddle, I’m sure I could have insisted. But Njabulo Sibindi, my guide, assured me the plan was to cruise with the current, not fight against it. This was canoeing for softies, and I was to relax. “Leave it all to me,” he said with a smile. Seated behind me, Njabulo navigated with expert ease. I, meanwhile, settled down to the serious business of gazing across the smooth water, scanning the banks for crocodiles and elephants and taking lazy sips from a glass of cold white wine. I had a hippo’s eye view of southern Africa’s mightiest river – and it was hard to imagine a better way to enjoy it.

Scattered with bush-covered islands and flanked by ilala palms, the Zambezi slides along between Zambia, to the north, and Zimbabwe to the south. This glorious stretch of water enchanted David Livingstone when his African explorations brought him here, just over 150 years ago. “Scenes so lovely,” he later wrote, “must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.”

But as the river nears the end of its upper course, there’s a rapid change in mood. With its dark, glossy surface creasing into eddies, it accelerates towards the horizon at a discernible downward tilt. In the last hectic few metres before the falls, the distant rumble of water crashing against water grows to a roar. This year, the roar was louder than ever: heavy rains in Angola and Zambia had filled the Zambezi to the brim, raising it higher than it had been for nearly forty years.

Njabulo had no intention of paddling us into the danger zone, but I still felt a thrill inside when, on rounding a bend, we caught sight of the spray from the falls. What would be our chances of survival if we got too close to the edge? I asked, thinking of the many cheerful daredevils who have chucked themselves over the lip of the Niagara Falls in barrels. “We’d have no chance at all,” said Njabulo, soberly. Small animals such as young crocodiles sometimes weather the drop. But the elephants, which had recently lost their footing in the unusually swift flow close to the edge, were less lucky. The Victoria Falls are over 100m high – twice the height of Niagara.

It’s little wonder, then, that Livingstone felt a “tremor of fear” as he approached the wall of spray in a canoe not wholly dissimilar to mine. His companions had described the falls to him, referring to them by their Makololo name: Mosi-oa-Tunya, meaning ‘Smoke Sounds There’ or ‘The Smoke That Thunders’. It was November, and the water level was low enough to allow his paddlers to take him perilously close to the edge, landing on Goat Island, since renamed Livingstone Island. From here, he could peer down into the narrow gorge that sucks the Zambezi into its mile-wide jaws at a rate of between 300 and 10,000 cubic metres per second.

Whether or not Livingstone was the first European explorer to view the falls remains uncertain, but the new name he gave them – that of his queen – stuck. He publicised their existence in his journals and they have attracted streams of tourists and adventurers ever since. In the late 1990s well over half a million people a year visited the tiny, delicate rainforest on the southern bank to gaze on this mind-boggling spectacle of natural power, their sheer numbers causing environmentalists to fear for the forest’s future. Then in 2000 everything changed. Reports of political turmoil and civil unrest shattered visitor confidence in Zimbabwe, and tourists began to abandon the tourist town of Victoria Falls in favour of the relatively underdeveloped town of Livingstone, just over the border in Zambia.

Zimbabwe’s undoing delivered Zambia a windfall. The Zambians responded by raising the profile of the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park on the east side of the falls and encouraging hoteliers and adventure companies to invest in new riverside accommodation and action-packed activity programmes. Their appeal to adventure-enthusiasts, luxury-lovers and authenticity-seekers alike was so successful that the crowds poured in. Their appetite for the region has never dimmed. Most seemed satisfied they’d be immune from Zimbabwe’s troubles in Zambia. As Zambian Finance Minister Ng’andu Magande recently put it: “When your neighbour has a party, you hear the noise, when they have a funeral you hear the wailing. But it has not been too disruptive.”

Zimbabwe, however, is still trying to recover from the collapse. This year, determined to reignite interest in their side of the falls, Zimbabwean tourism professionals have laid aside old rivalries and thrown themselves headlong into an effort to promote Victoria Falls as a safe, accessible, must-see tourist destination. But is the battle already lost? I was keen to find out.


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