Victoria Falls 

Victoria Falls is a waterfall on the Zambezi River in southern Africa, between Zimbabwe and Zambia. At the falls, the river is about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) wide. The falls plunges 355 feet (108 meters) into a gorge. The local name of the falls, Mosi oa Tunya (smoke that thunders), describes its tremendous sound and the water vapor that rises from the falls.

There are few appropriate superlatives that have not already been applied to this magnificent natural wonder of the world; in many ways it defies description. So vast are the Falls and their setting that it is difficult to grasp their true grandeur and for this reason, they are perhaps best seen from the air.

The Victoria Falls offer an inescapable closeness to the natural elements. The towering column of spray when the river is high, the thunder of the falling water, the terrifying abyss that separates Zimbabwe from Zambia, the forest - lined, placid, tranquil lagoons upstream in which hippo and deadly crocodiles lurk. David Livingstone reported the existence of the Falls to the outside world in 1860. The result was immediate and from that point, the number of foreign visitors rose steadily. People walked, rode on horseback or travelled by ox - wagon from the Transvaal along what was then called the Hunters Road (now the border between Botswana and Zimbabwe) and on reaching George Westbeech's store at Pandamatenga left their animals there, safe from the lethal bite of the tsetse fly, and walked the remaining 80 kilometres, due north to the Falls

The conflict in South Africa finally resolved and the region politically more stable, tourism is developing rapidly. New activities are constantly emerging and the industry is becoming more and more sophisticated. Rafting the wild rapids below the Falls was the first innovation more than ten years ago.
Now the list of organised, commercial activities has expanded dramatically. Visitors can kayak, canoe, fish, go on guided walking safaris, ride on horseback, lunch on Livingstone's Island and in addition to the well-known "Flight of Angels", for the more adventurous there is microlighting with stunning views of the Falls.

The Zambezi River's gentle roll through Africa is interrupted abruptly and spectacularly when the flat basalt basin that forms the river's bed suddenly gives way, dropping the placid river over a cliff into a 100-meter (328-foot) deep gash between The Victoria Falls and a matching cliff across the way. The now-churning waters -- two kilometers (1 1/4 miles) wide at the point of the falls -- rumble and roar and tumble through a narrow exit into the Batoka Gorge on its way to the Mozambique Channel off eastern Africa. Scottish missionary David Livingstone tagged the awesome falls Victoria, for the British queen, when, in 1855, he became the first white man to see them.
But native Africans had known their power -- and the towering spray rising a thousand feet in the sky over the Zambezi plain -- for ages. They called the falls "Mosi oa Tunya" (The Smoke that Thunders). The hotels, bridges and trails that have sprung up around the falls are insignificant compared to the raw power of the river's drop and its wild ride out of the abyss.