Victoria Falls: your guide to the Zambezi's Unesco World Heritage Site

Victoria Falls is much more than just a mesmerising 100-metre plunge down a cliff. As a £120m airport opens nearby, Samuel Fishwick falls for its thrills and spills 
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Not much makes a 13-hour-and-40-minute journey fly by. Still, after departing from Heathrow Airport and arriving via a transfer at Johannesburg Airport, my first sight of Victoria Falls puts it all in perspective. Rumbling between Zimbabwe and Zambia, where the two nations meet, the world’s largest sheet of falling water has taken 150 million years to form, thundering between rock faces as if trying to escape their outstretched arms.

Last November, President Robert Mugabe (yes, still there) opened Zimbabwe’s £120m Victoria Falls International Airport, promising direct flights to Europe — as well as floods of tourists from it. I arrive in Zim, blinking into the African sun, and am whizzed off to the five-star Victoria Falls Safari Club, where plump pillows greet me and grazing warthogs keep the grass trim. Retreating to the comfort of my spacious room, I relax in a roll-top bath to the sound of rain frogs.

In the wet season, thunderstorms transform the surrounding scrubland into a green carpet. For now, the landscape is as dry as the rhebok bones strewn across it. Clouds of vultures circle overhead while dust devils, like little tornadoes, puff across the red horizon. I spend an evening in hushed reverie at an animal hide beside a watering hole, within walking distance of the lodge. Monkeys monkey around, and crocodiles snap at thirsty guinea fowl.

A room at the Victoria Falls Safari Club

Not to be outdone by mother nature, the steep-sided Zambezi valley has plenty of high-octane activities to gorge yourself on, such as zipline tours of the forest canopy and bungee jumping (a bridge too far for me), while the air is thick with the hum of helicopters ferrying monied tourists over the falls. In the evenings, riverboat tours sail serenely up the Zambezi River, away from the falls, where you can raise a glass of champagne to the hippos yawning in the sunset.

Dr David Livingstone named the waterfall after Queen Victoria when he claimed the natural wonder for the British Empire in 1855, but I far prefer Mosi-oa-Tunya, or The Smoke that Thunders, as it is known in the local Tonga language. It is worth slowing down just to watch and appreciate this natural wonder up close.

Victoria Falls

On the Zambian side, daredevils soak in Devil’s Pool, a still, natural-hollow bath precariously teetering 108 metres over the gorge. The waiting time can be up to two weeks, so book in advance. Up close, the banks of the valley are covered with dense vegetation, but at the edge of the ravine little separates you from the falls’ thrashing maws apart from a line of brambles.

It is hard to tear yourself away, but, after all those millennia, this wonder isn’t going anywhere soon. With travel times plummeting, there has never been a better time to go.

Zimbabwe check-list

1. Drink - Champagne on sunset riverboat tours up the Zambezi, with dinner and a side of hippos lounging on the riverbank.

2. Eat - Flame-grilled warthog-and-crocodile stir-fry at the Makuwa-Kuwa Restaurant, one of two at the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge.

3. Visit - Ngoma Safari Lodge in Botswana, a two-hour drive from Victoria Falls, with day-long safaris on the banks of the Chobe River to spot the big five, and luxurious lodges and plunge pools.

Victoria Falls Safari Club, from £897 per person for three nights half-board including The Boma Dinner & Drum Show, return transfers from Victoria Falls Airport, guided tour of the falls and sunset cruise (africaalbidatourism.com)

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