Day 20 – The Zambezi: The Same River, Twice

The deal was simple. Lorena would come white-water rafting if I would come on the sunset cruise. Neither of us wanted the other’s half of the day, which is exactly why we agreed.

Lorena was terrified. She had rafted once before, years ago, and the headteacher at her school had gone over the side into the water to general terror and the delight of watching staff and students, and Lorena had no intention of ending up the same way. Right up to the morning she pretended to feel unwell so she would not have to go. Then she came anyway. For the first rapids she folded herself into the bottom of the raft and contributed very little, but she came, and I admired her more for being frightened and coming than I would have if she had felt nothing.

We rafted with Maano Adventures, a local company; one of the men on our raft was the uncle who had been among the first to start rafting on the Zambezi at all, back before it became the industry it now is. The captain was young, sharp and funny, and he let me steer for long stretches where there were no rapids, which was harder than it looked, because unlike the other boats with their lighter modern gear, ours was steered with heavy wooden oars. There were three of us plus crew, and among the paying passengers was a girl from Hong Kong, dressed head to toe against the sun, a nurse who had quit her job and given herself six months in Africa to work out what to do next.

They picked us up in the morning and drove us out along the valley to the put-in, over an hour in an open van with the whole crew, a lovely run in itself, a kayaker following along to fish out anyone who went in. And then the gorge. The descent into the Batoka Gorge to reach the river is steep and long. The rapids, when they came, were enormous fun and, for Lorena, deeply alarming, especially at the moment each one was announced by name: “Stairway to Heaven”, “The Washing Machine”, “Oblivion”. We did not flip (the agreed motto was “Not Today!”), and no one went overboard, and halfway down, in a calm stretch, I climbed out and swam in the Zambezi, which was not cold at all and entirely wonderful.

Getting out is the hard part. The cable car up the gorge was not working, so we climbed out on foot, the most exhausting thing of the whole day, a long haul up the rock face still carrying paddle and helmet and lifejacket, with a spectacular view as the only compensation. At the top, where the cable car starts, the crew had laid on a good light lunch.

The drive back took us through the villages of the valley, and this was the part that stayed with me longest. The young men on the crew are from here, and along the way we passed the villages they had grown up in, poor and dignified, huts and dust, the classic image of an African village, and it is a different thing to pass through one with someone who was born in it. They told us about the kilometres they walk to reach the only school in the area, how hard water is to find in the dry season, and how, in the rains, the roads turn to a swamp that has trapped rafting tourists before now, leaving them to limp back to Livingstone late at night. The rapids we had paid to be frightened by were, to them, just the river at the bottom of the road home.

They dropped us at Jollyboys at four. At five we were collected for the cruise.

The sunset cruise was my side of the bargain, and I will be honest: it is not my kind of thing. Hippos and crocodiles and fish eagles and a river catching fire at sunset are lovely words, but the format looked to me like a postcard aimed at well-fed tourists cheered by an open bar and the promise of drinking as much as they liked. The boat, the Queen of Africa, was handsome, and there were the regulation canapés and drinks, and we took gin and tonics in memory of the sundowners at South Luangwa. And, credit where due, we did see the animals, really see them: hippos and crocodiles, elephants coming down to drink, the eagles, and the sunset over the river was exactly the “African” sunset it had promised to be, and genuinely beautiful.

It was a tourist trap. But after the raw power of the morning in the gorge, it could be forgiven. Without Lorena I would never have gone, and a bit of calm after all that adrenaline turned out to be no bad thing. I prefer the violence of the gorge in the morning to the wide slow river at dusk. But the contrast was the point, and there was real pleasure in it: the same river that spends the morning trying to kill you spends the evening rocking you gently with a drink in your hand.

On the cruise we met an American couple on their honeymoon, both around forty, and something like our mirror image: he wanted everything calm and restful, she wanted to throw herself at every adventure going. She and I plotted more than once to mutiny and abandon ship, and in the end all four of us just posed for a photo at sunset. We would run into them again, entirely by chance, the next day on our expedition to Chobe in Botswana. But that is another story.

Practical Notes

Where I stayed

Third night at Jollyboys Backpackers, Livingstone (details in Day 18).

What I did

White-water rafting, Batoka Gorge, with Maano Adventures, a local operator. Half-day trip: over an hour’s drive out along the valley, a steep descent into the gorge, grade 4–5 rapids in the dry season (August), when low water opens up the big named rapids. A safety kayaker follows the rafts. $140 per person. https://www.maanoadventures.com/
Worth knowing: the climb back out of the gorge on foot is genuinely hard (the cable car was not running when we went), carrying your own gear; be ready for it. A light lunch was provided at the top. The drive back passes through the valley villages.
Sunset cruise on the Zambezi (African Queen/Princess-type boat; ours was the Queen of Africa). Canapés and drinks included, animals along the banks (hippos, crocodiles, elephants, fish eagles), and the sunset. Touristy and drink-focused, but scenic; a relaxed contrast to the rafting. $65 per person.