RAFTING THE ZAMBEZI

Many places in the world claim to be one of the seven wonders of the world, but few truly deserve it. One deserving place is Victoria Falls, on the Zambezi River bordering Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Since its discovery by explorer and missionary Dr. David Livingstone in 1855, this geological marvel has been a must-see destination in southern Africa. But today’s tourist finds a new twist on this old favorite: the sport of river rafting.

You can reach Victoria Falls via daily Air Zimbabwe flights from Harare, or from the Zambia side of the border by air from Lusaka to the town of Livingstone, about 10 kilometers from the falls.

Many travelers stop over at the falls on their visits to the region’s wildlife areas, which include the game parks of Botswana’s Okavango Delta and Zambia’s Luangwa and Zimbabwe’s Hwange national parks.

Tourists have been coming to Victoria Falls ever since it was practical. In the early years of this century the trans-African railroad from Cairo to Cape Town was engineered to pass close to the falls, and almost at once the Victoria Falls Hotel opened on the southern edge of the great gorge created by the river’s tumble.

The hotel was run by Pierre Garuzzi, straight from the five-star Carlton and Savoy hotels in London, and featured a French chef, Arab waiters and an American barman, a classic use of national talents.

But it is neither hotelier nor guidebook hype that draws people to Victoria Falls. It is simply the pure physical miracle of the place that has attracted legions of visitors over the decades, for to stand near the edge of this cascade is to rediscover a sense of wonderment.

At this mile-wide cleft in the basaltic skin of southern Africa, the Zambezi River plummets more than 300 feet, twice the height of Niagara, into a narrow gorge of black rock.

And from the long chasm into which the torrent falls far below, a single narrow passage slips like a snake through a switchback canyon as the Zambezi continues its long journey to the Indian Ocean.

Five distinct falls plunge over the long lip, but in the full spate of the rainy season, usually from January to June, the five falls are obstructed from view by towering clouds of spray caused by the water’s plunge.

For the visitor who ventures down the Rain Forest Trail on the Zimbabwe side of the falls, rain gear is essential and the noise of the cataract is overwhelming. Hence the native name for the falls, Musi-o-tunya, “the smoke that thunders.”

Until 1981 visitors were content with simply looking at this wonder: No one had tried to go over Victoria Falls in a barrel, or to challenge the wild course of the Zambezi River from the base of the falls.

Then California-based Sobek Expeditions, with backing from National Geographic and a film crew from ABC’s “American Sportsman,” took the wild ride down the river.

A week and several flipped boats later the crew floated into the quiet waters of Lake Kariba 100 kilometers downstream. They pronounced the trip a classic, and the screening of the “American Sportsman” film was one of the series’ most popular episodes. (The barrel-over-the-falls trick has yet to be tried, however; most experts agree that it’s certain death.)

Low-Water Season

Sobek began taking paying customers down the Zambezi in 1982, limiting the season to the low-water months between August and December. It offers two trips: a one-day ride from the base of Victoria Falls through 10 major rapids and a weeklong expedition to the quiet waters of Lake Kariba.

In 1985 another river company--known simply as Raft Inc.--from Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe, began offering one-day trips on a different section of the river below the falls. In that relatively short time, since 1981, the rafting of the Zambezi has transformed the tourist industry of Victoria Falls.

The falls are still the big draw, but once visitors reach the small town of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, or cross the border toward Livingstone, Zambia, a virtual media blitz (in African terms, at least) publicizes the attraction of river running on the Zambezi.

Posters and price lists are evident in hotel lobbies, car rental agencies, Air Zimbabwe ticket offices, even at the usually circumspect border stations. Tourists from Australia, Europe, Asia and the United States who might never consider a rafting trip in their home country find their curiosity piqued.

Perfectly Designed

Were a hydraulic engineer to design the perfect white-water river, he would merely duplicate the efforts of nature on the Zambezi. In its first seven miles below the falls, 10 steep chutes lead into rolling waves and boiling holes, one after another, with calm pools of 72-degree water beneath each. The result is a one-day river trip that must surely be among the wonders of the rafter’s world.

Foremost among the factors that elevate the Zambezi above the ordinary is the river trip’s starting point, the put-in. Passengers meet at Zambia’s Musi-o-Tunya Hotel just across from the border station. It’s a good place to enjoy a buffet breakfast before the day’s activities.

They follow a well-worn trail down through a mini-rain forest tucked in the wrinkles of the canyon, emerging at the Boiling Pot at the base of Victoria Falls.

This huge eddy swirls with the frustrated energies of a river that just 200 yards upstream was more than a mile wide, a broad, slow-moving drain for a large portion of east-central Africa.

The sharp cut of the main gorge snatches the rug out from under the river, so that it gushes in smoking, thundering chaos over a 330-foot length, straight down.

A narrow canyon emerges from the gorge of the falls to carry the river to its eventual outlet into the Indian Ocean. At the head of this canyon, within sight of the wild and broken wall of Victoria Falls, the river rafts are rigged, set afloat and filled with passengers.

For many of the tourists who join these trips, this is their first river adventure, and if the mind-boggling beauty of the put-in doesn’t spoil them for any other rafting journey, the rapids will.

Getting the Details

“It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3,” our guide, Michael Speaks, told us. We’d already had the safety lecture, a helpful if somewhat gruesome speech designed to winnow the weak-willed from the merely apprehensive, but sitting on the tubes of the surging raft in the Boiling Pot, we got the details.

“Rapid No. 1 shows you how big the waves get; No. 2 shows you they get bigger, and No. 3 shows you how small they were in 1 and 2.”

Speaks was working his second season on the Zambezi. In between, during the winter and spring he runs a guide service near Denali National Park in Alaska. He seems to thrive on the contrast.

“Without the passengers,” Speaks went on, “we couldn’t even run the Zambezi. We put from three to five people in the front of the boat. That’s not to load up on paying customers--that’s to prevent flips.” He grinned. The thought of flips makes all the boatmen in Zambia slightly edgy.

The count runs between 40 and 100 flipped boats each season, most of them on the longer seven-day stretch, and no guide who has worked the river for even half a season has ever beaten the odds. But with the broad pools of warm water beneath each rapid, flips are as safe as they can ever be; no one has ever drowned, and injuries are almost unheard of.

“The reason we want you up there is very simple. If there’s not enough weight in the front, when we hit these 12- and 15-foot waves the boat will just ride straight up and flop back over. With you guys up there punching into every wave, we surge through the wave, not over it, and we stay upright.

A Rugby Scrum

“I want you,” he continued, “to think of yourselves as a rugby scrum. Link arms, hug each other, do whatever you have to to make sure that you act as one 400-pound body punching into every wave. If we go backward”--he looked over his shoulder at me, alone in the back--”you do the same.”

Then we were off, and it was just as he said: 1, 2 and 3 are Big, Bigger and Bigger Still. The first day’s rapids between the Boiling Pot and the Songwe Gorge take-out have only numbers: The names don’t begin until late on Day 2 of the seven-day expedition.

But briefly, 4 is an even wilder ride than 3, a twisting lateral wave shoving every other boat into a wall on the right; then No. 5, perhaps the single most notorious rapid in Africa--except Boussa on the Niger, which drowned explorer Mungo Park in 1806.

A huge rock creates a rooster-tail wave, and an enormous hidden pour-over borders the right side of the chute. At the bottom of the drop--10 feet? 12? There’s very little time to take measurements--the waves are huge and unpredictable.

When Time Stops

The critical moment is the entry: You ride up to the rooster-tail and pause, waiting for the drop to suck you in. In that instant, between your guide’s own best efforts and whatever surprises the river has in store for you a second later, time stops.

“It’s my favorite place in the world,” Gary Lemmer, one of Sobek’s most experienced Zambezi guides, is fond of saying. “There’s no place else like it.”

But don’t think the rest is anticlimax: 6 is almost as crazy as 4, and 7 is the longest and most technical rapid on the first day.

A substantial lunch is prepared and served by the guides at midday, in preparation for the afternoon’s efforts. These include not only the running of No. 8 but the non-running of No. 9.

“We don’t run this one,” said Speaks as we pulled in for the relatively quick but demanding portage. “You can’t.” The river narrows, leaving a wide rocky passage on the right side, which drives nastily down a 15-foot crater into a solid wall of white: 7,000 cubic feet per second of it. No one questions making the portage for more than a foolhardy moment.

The hike out at Songwe Gorge is cruel, a steep trail rising 2,000 feet in less than a mile, alternately rocky and dusty, more suitable for goats than river runners (let alone tourists).

Repeat customers have been known to sign up for the seven-day trip just to avoid the hike out at Songwe at the end of Day 1. But at the top, where passengers find transport ready to take them back to their hotel, there’s a view down to the remote lower canyon, where the Zambezi continues to wind green and timeless through the folded, scarred terrain of southern Africa.

And there’s the bone-weary satisfaction of a day gone by that’s gone by right, riding the temperamental currents of the Great Zambezi.

The Zambezi trips can be booked through Sobek Expeditions, P.O. Box 1089, Angels Camp, Calif. 95222, phone (209) 736-4524. Cost for the one-day trip is $110 weekdays, $140 weekends. A two-day trip is also available for $165 weekdays/$195 weekends.

The full seven-day Zambezi River expedition costs $1,195 including all transport from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, or Livingstone, Zambia, river and group camping equipment, all meals and professional guides.

All trips can also be booked at hotels and travel agencies in the Victoria Falls region, but for the seven-day run in particular, travelers are advised to book through Sobek well in advance.