Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

At various times in your life someone has mentioned “The Seven Wonders of the World.” What they may be thinking about is the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World which according to Wiki

“Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest of the ancient wonders—remains relatively intact. The Colossus of Rhodes, Lighthouse of Alexandria and Mausoleum at Halicarnassuswere destroyed in earthquakes, and the Temple of Artemis and Statue of Zeus deliberately destroyed. The location and ultimate fate of the Hanging Gardens is unknown, with speculation that they may not have existed at all.”

Since the Gardens were at Ninevah I am not sure that I agree completely with the above. What you have to notice about the list is that it is extremely Euro-centric. My list would include include the Great Wall of China, Stonehenge, The Taj Mahal, Ankor Watt ….

But today I will stop muttering around and just enjoy one of the truely impressive natural wonders: Victoria Falls. David Livingstone was the first European to see the falls in 1855.

Unlike most rivers with water falls, this is a long front fall that drops into a gorge due to the edge being where a tectonic plate fall occurred. The result is that the river at the bottom runs at 90* from the upper river. According to signage at the falls – over the eons the river has worked back with this being the seventh location of the f alls and the Devil’s Cascade area being predicted as the next location in a measly 10,000 years. It is a wide falls which can be viewed from multiple locations on the Zimbabwe, the Zambian side or the bridge across the downstream gorge which connects the countries.

The water has been steadily rising for the last week with the waters from Angola finally reaching this area.  It will get steadily higher for the next weeks as more of the flood waters head for the Indian Ocean. The roaring of the water can be heard from a serious distance. At infrequent times there is the accompaniment of screams from the bungee jumpers.  No, I can be brave but am not that stupid.

The sun was shining, the falls put an incredible amount of spray in the air. I think we were all soaked as we went from observation point to observation point along the trail. Yes, I had a rain jacket. It served to protect the camera. So lots of mist, water, and rainbows:

On to the photos which are mostly from the upper river -> Devils Cascade, Rainbow Falls, multiple other named falls as one works along the face (downstream really doesn’t work well as a descriptor in this case):

As seen from our plane coming in prior to Hwange Park

Quick glimpse from a bus

to orient you

the river system

upper river

upper river

The bridge over the lower river

Bungee station in the middle