Zambezi River rafting thrills, with or without crocodiles
News of a Brits' survival of a croc attack brings back memories of my wild river ride below Africa's Victoria Falls.
And I thought the most dangerous part of rafting the Zambezi River was the other young people in the raft with me.
Turns out there are crocodiles not far below Victoria Falls.
The only crocodile we saw on our Zambezi River rafting trip below Victoria Falls was a baby, maybe two feet long, sunning on a rock.
Crocs usually find the Zambezi River below Victoria Falls inhospitable due to the world’s most consistent, huge whitewater rapids of any rafting day trip in the world (see a video clip of our trip here).
The river is so violent and turbulent that it seems impossible for crocodiles to live there, or to find anything to eat. Apparently the rafting companies think the same . . .
Let’s start at the beginning. My Zambezi day trip was on the Zimbabwe side, but the Zambia side where the crocodile attack described by the BBC occurred has a similar experience. Once in the canyon, Zimbabwe is river right and Zambia is river left. The river is the border.
Crocs and hippos live in the river above Victoria Falls, but anything foolish enough to get swept over the falls would surely get crushed by the 355-foot drop. At least that’s what our Wild Horizons guides told us (wildhorizons.co/za). Maybe a baby croc could survive, but it would need to make its way far downriver to find anything to eat.
There is no road and just barely a trail into the 400-foot deep canyon. Paddle raft clients slip and slide down steep path to the rafts, which are carried up and down the paths like rolled-cigars on the shoulders of five local porters.
Once on the water, the guide makes everyone jump into a safe eddy to get wet and practice getting back in the raft. Then we’re off, facing 20 or so named rapids of the biggest kind imaginable (see a list here). Some even have subtitles, a-b-c-d-e . . . It’s almost like having all the big water of Arizona’s Colorado River during 250 miles in the Grand Canyon packed into a day trip.
We started with three rafts, but after a short midway break I noticed there were only two rafts. Our guide said one raft’s paddlers voted to abort the trip and hike out from the midway high/low-water path up the cliffs. The river was deemed low water during our trip so we continued into the biggest rapids of all.
Our guide gave us the option at the biggest rapid, to either go straight through or maneuver around in a slightly safer path. Being in a raft filled with young inexperienced boaters, of course they voted to go through the big hole.
The raft flipped and our guide did an incredible job getting the raft back upright and the rafters inside. Our reward at the end was to scramble up the cliff, 700 feet high since the river had been dropping, to a waiting lunch feast.
At least we cheated the crocs of their feast.
While eating lunch our guide said no boat that he had been in during his three years on the made it through the biggest hole without flipping. The other raft with us had avoided the hole and made it through upright.
