Victoria Falls

After some debating over where to stay we eventually agreed to stay in this cute little room made from bamboo, we had arrived quite late so by the time we had tea it was bed time! The next day we went white water rafting down the Zambezi! We were picked up and taken to a lush little office with huge plasma screens in it, our guide Victor told us all about what would happen and gave us the safety talk. I was absolutely terrified by the end, he told us that there had been crocodile sightings and what to do if you come out of the raft. We already knew that there had been people killed as our guide for Antelope Park, Dustin used to work on the river and had quit after he lost a lady on her honeymoon. Nevermind we thought I'm sure we'l be fine!

On the way to the river about 25 locals jumped in the truck who were going to help us inflate the raft! The walk down the gorge and poor Shannon had decided to go barefooted- ouch! Both me and John fell over flat on our bums, what a surprise. We got into the raft and our guide told us all about all of the different commands he would shout for us to do with our paddles- these were paddle forward, back and paddle hard and the funnest one was GET DOWN GET DOWN which you had to crouch down and hold on to the side- we practiced them all for a bit and then jumped out!

The rafting was petty scary, especially on the narrows as they said "this will not be a fun place to get out and swim" I didn't paddle on these bits I just held on instead! It was so much fun- in our raft was me, John, Dave and Shannon. There was some unofficial rapids too that are created when there is a lot of water in the rive. As well as it being exciting the gorge itself was stunning, we didn't take our camera for obvious reasons but we had the whole thing filmed and it is hilarious to watch- the guy was ina little kayak and did a class job! Half way down the river the guide asked if we would like to get out and jump off a rock, so we all did- it was pretty high so John and Shannon jumped straight off, it took me ages to jump off it I just debated on the edge (much to my embarrassment he captured wonderfully on the dvd) and it took Dave even longer- this has to be the funniest dvd footage ever captured! The guide let us jump out, hold on to the side of the raft and swim through a rapid! After about ten seconds after getting back into the raft we saw a baby croc- I sure as hell wouldn't have been swimming if I had saw him earlier! On our second final rapid the guide took it upon himself (cheers!) to flip the boat upside down, we weren't given any warning it was well scary! Shannon managed to jump up and land back on the boat in the same place, Dave and John came out but managed to hold on and ended up on the right side of the boat but I got stuck underneath the boat or a good 30 seconds- I just held on while it dragged me through rapids gasping for breath whenever I got the chance! I could just hear John shouting "where's Erin" the guide does a head count then dives under to try and find the others. It felt like ages till I heard him even though he did it as quick as possible, I heard him say don't panic and said I had to go with him and swim back undneath the raft to get on the right side, I was so relieved to see the other side of the raft but because it was now upside down the guide and Shannon had to flip it over from on top and we had to hang onto the side and go back under the water- I wasn't very happy to hear that! Then the guide dunks you down in the water and pulls you back into the raft. Being the drama queen I am I was proper taken a back for a while and (shock horror) I was silent for ages and Dave said it took me a couple of minutes to stop looking so mystified! What a big softy! Apparently theres been sightings of 2 metre long crocs where the boat flipped- how crazy!

All in all rafting was mint, the only bad bit was "the walk of death"out of the gorge, you should have seen how quick we ran for the shade to get to our picnic (I think John was more concerned about the free beer though!). After our food which was lush they dropped us back at the hostel and all the rafting team had a walk to the falls themselves.

The falls are so impressive, there's a lot of mist coming off them at the minute as Zimbabwe is having crazy amounts of rain. We stood from the bridge and watched them for a while, but the touts in Zim are extremely persistent ad kind of spoilt it a bit. Well until they realised Dave was much easier game than me and John and hassled him- it was very funny to watch...poor Dave! We had been contemplating doing some of the adrenalin stuff like bungee jumping or the gorge swing, but after watching other people do it we decided to let it wait till New Zealand- not that we were scared or anything! When we were walking back up just as we were starting to feel knackered we heard a beep and Dale and the others were on the truck, so we jumped on and headed to the big tree. Well not much to say about this other than the fact it was a big tree. Most importantly we got a lift back to the hostel. We all got dolled up and headed to shoestrings- another hostel that's lively, we all got canny drunk ate pizza and stumbled home...it felt like being at home again, apart from the fact that hippos have been known to roam the streets, I'm sure there's a joke about big market girls in there somewhere! It was a wicked night and best of all it wasn't followed by a bad hangover, woo hoo!

It's a good job it wasn't as we were up bright an early to do a 15 minute helicopter ride over the falls.This was totally amazing, it was a little scary at first but they take you so so close to the falls and the view is spectacular- it had to be the quickest 15 minutes of our lives though! John and I walked to the rafting office and picked up our DVD and watched it on the plasma screens, we were in hysterics watching us. We then bumped into Dave and we all went to this beautiful hotel called Ilalla for lunch. I couldn't eat all of my gigantic burger so I wrapped it up and we gave it to a blind lady and her 2 children which was nice to see them happy.

When we got back to the hostel it was time to go for our Sunset cruise (which they gave us dead cheap for doing the rafting and the flight). The cruise was class we stopped off at a little island for lunch and we saw hippos, crocodiles and lots of pretty little birds... Dad you would have loved it! You were also given free drinks and they made a DVD of the whole thing, this is on the way home but we haven't seen this yet, so you will have to tell us about it! Later that evening we all went out for tea, where I ordered the most disgusting lasagne ever made, the bread was free so I just ate lots of that. It was a nice night and then me, John, Jenny, Dave, Roy all got lost on the way home- unlike us I know- we were just wandering round in circles until Roy saved the day and found the hostel! This is where we coined the phrase "hip hip hooRoy", which he loves when we shout... Roy if your reding this don't pretend you don't!

We were due to leave Vic falls at lunch time to head for Botswana so Dave, John and I headed to the falls national park. You get really close to the falls and they are unbelievable you get absolutely drenched off the mist and all the boring proper tourists (not that there was many as they have been put off with Zims political problems) had big ponchos on but we roughed it, which we regretted when we were freezing! You soon dry off in the sunshine though.

Then we left Vic falls and all the adventure behind and headed to Botswana!