Victoria Falls: Part Three – Mosi-oa-Tunya

How many wonders of the world can you name?

My friends and I—a well-travelled and intelligent group let it be said, though admittedly that’s more my friends than I—could not reach the requisite seven. Of course, had my suggestion of Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction not been so roundly mocked and ridiculed, we would have succeeded in achieving the special number. But let me ask you this, how many wonders of the world have you seen? How many have you walked upon, stumbled in, waded through? In this part of the world there is only one of which to speak—Victoria Falls.

It hasn’t rained in Zambia for several months, yet still the Zambezi River flows strong and true. Several miles south of Livingstone, and less than a mile north of the town of Vic Falls in neighbouring Zimbabwe, the river slows and widens like a great delta gently greeting the ocean. This river, however, does not meet an ocean but a precipitous cliff, over which it falls a hundred metres or more into the tumultuous chasm below. The sight is impressive in the dry season. When the rains finally arrive, the intensity of this curtain of water, which spans nearly two kilometres from river bank to river bank—from Zambia to Zimbabwe—must be truly incredible.

Where the river falls, it is like the earth has been torn in two. The gap is surprisingly narrow, squeezing the water into a bubbling channel of dangerous froth. Froth—that word is far too pedestrian and completely insufficient to describe the fast white waters of the Zambezi after the falls, yet I know of no better word to use. Maybe none exists. Maybe there is no place on earth quite like this. Victoria Falls was named after the legendary Queen of England; the great explorer, David Livingstone, thinking no name more worthy for this fantastic spectacle, and no spectacle more worthy for the sovereign’s name. The locals, however, still refer to the phenomenon as ‘Mosi-oa-Tunya’, or The Smoke that Thunders, a description both of the resulting spray and noise far better than any I could here offer.

After the turbulence and chaos of the river’s sudden drop, it eventually escapes into the ravine through a gap in the opposing wall, where it continues at a fearsome pace eastward, and, one can only imagine, further down towards the centre of the earth.

I viewed the falls from the swirling mists of the opposite bank, I walked and waded tentatively across the top—for the first time in my life actually looking down upon a rainbow—and I hiked along fallen trees and across large boulders deep down into the ravine itself, but only from above do I believe you can really appreciate the majesty of this whole place. I am but a poor traveller and such an indulgence was beyond my means. One day, I hope to return to gaze upon this sight like one of Livingstone’s angels in flight. When he spoke so passionately of this place, he spoke true.

The Seven Wonders of the Natural World are:

Victoria Falls
Grand Canyon
Great Barrier Reef
Harbour of Rio de Janeiro
Mount Everest
Aurora
Parícutin Volcano

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World are:

Great Pyramid of Giza
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Statue of Zeus at Olympia
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus
Colossus of Rhodes
Lighthouse of Alexandria

The Seven Wonders of the Modern World are:

Great Wall of China
Petra
Christ the Redeemer
Machu Picchu
Chichen Itza
Roman Colloseum
Taj Mahal

Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction is yet to receive the recognition it deserves.