"Rafting on the roaring Zambezi" Victoria Falls Travelogue by Alain_Smeets

Today D-day, it’s the 20 October and we awake with a burning sun in the sky. Today we are going to raft. As we already can start with that smiling sun high in the heavens, it can be nothing else then a great day. Me, Jean, Rita, Guy, Marianne and Bill are the candidates to go for that half-day rafting trip. In the morning we go first to the instruction center and heard there an amusing and entertaining informative presentation done by an representative of the Shearwater Company. We listened to the names of the rapids like “the mother or oblivion” or “commercial suicide”.

Where is the front of this boat ?

The Zambezi is an grade 5 river. The rapids are categorized according a system. Grade 6 is the highest grade and means not to be done. A grade 6 is too dangerous to do. This means that grade 5 is very difficult to do. And the 7 rapids we are going to do are almost all of grade 5 only one of grade 3. It sounds like a nice rafting. But his message is serious but raped in a funny package. Bill is a little bit quiet because he can’t swim. But this is not necessary because we all get a life jacket. The person is telling everything very lively and does this with a lot of movements. He tells of people falling out of the rafts, rafts who are turning over and people floating on the water. He makes a lot of funny remarks about this and tells in a funny voice the stupid things that you can do. Like not putting out your hand out if the person in the boat wants to get you in. Or that you fall into the water and you reach to the person in the boat and that they wave at you, hello nice to see you and you float by them. You have to see his face and impressions and you laugh and keep on laughing. But at the end this is all a serious item to think about.

Then there is a group of French people arriving, all of them 60 or 70+. What do these people do here? Now it looks all less heroic with these old folks here. The magic from a few moments ago is gone. Their guide tries to translated as good as she can the explanation from the Shearwater guy.

Then we are asked if we want to peddle or that we just want to hold on. We decide to hold on. Because the peddlers only hold the paddle and the others can hold the ropes. We got a guide named Obert. A very entertaining guy. We are leaving in a buss to the starting point at the falls. There we have to start our decent to the river. A first easy walk of 15 minutes where we got the safety briefing. Like wear a life jacket and a helmet. They explained how to float in the water and to get as fast as possible into a boat when you fall out. Because the Zambezi is the house of small crocodiles (not in the rapids, but in the easy water). And also an very important lesson is don’t try to stand in the water at the side of the river because you can get trapped with your leg under a rock and the force of the water hits you over and you drown. Seemed that a women did this and drowned.

After this enlighten briefing we started our decent again, now for almost 20 minutes but it’s very steep. Sometimes the only thing to hold on is a rope. There is a lot of water running over the path and this makes it very slippery. Someone trips and hurt her leg. She has a nice bleeder.

At the river we have to board our raft and we are getting some lessons in how to behave in the raft like when someone falls out of an other boat and how to help him and pull him into our raft. We promised to do that, but promises promises like they say. We also learned that before you pull someone into the raft you have to push him below water and pull him in. Why? Well by pushing him down, you also gain the upward movement of the lifejacket to have an additional force. Then we learn to hold left or right or throw ourselves with our full weight on the front of the raft, this to balance the boat to avoid turning over. But if I look towards this now, we didn’t use any of these movements on the river. Me, Jean, Rita en Guy are sitting in front of the raft and Bill and Marianne with an other couple from Johannesburg are sitting in the back. The guide is sitting in the middle and has two big paddles to row and to steer with. With 4 persons in the front and 4 persons in the back, we don’t have much room to move. The guide concurs with us and agrees that 6 people in a boat is better, also for him. So he puts some extra air in the raft to compensate for the overload.

This is not going to end well!

The boats are now ready to leave but first we have to jump out of our raft for the video. The water feels nice, it’s a refreshing dip with these high temperatures. In front of our raft we carry a jar of water and one with orange juice. You will see later that this is a stupid place to hang things out of the raft.

There are maybe a dozen rafts on the river and a lot of people on a kayak, they pick people out of the water if needed. They care a lot about security.

Then the start is given, all rafts are ready and we approach the first rapid, this is a grade 5. We plunge into it, the first waves are taking us directly to the river walls, a straight rock-formation of more then 20 meters high. We hit the wall with all the force and momentum that we get from the white water. Unfortunately the jars with water and orange-juice were in front and are useless now. We lost the lid of both of them. The second big wave opens a gap in the water and the front of the raft is disappearing beneath the water. We felt the force, the force of the water when it hits us right in the face and chest. We are forced back by the water and feel the muscles in our arms when we pull the ropes to hold on and to get the nose out of the water. Soaking wet and after a joy ride we came through it. Whooooaw Whoooaw that felt great. Was this now a great rapid it didn’t feel like that. I will tell you later more why I thought lide that. This rapid was number 4 and is named “Morning Glory” , it felt glorious. It tasts for more. It was an grade 5.

In this first rapid, some people get thrown out of the boats and then we see the first one floating past us. It’s a Frenchman, hanging on the end of a kayak, he’s to afraid to let go, and the back-end of the our raft forgets to pull him off. So we go past him and the next raft had to pull him in. Think about that promise we made. They had to give him mouth to mouth. Sounds like a nice trip he, and it is. Guy had heard that 2 people had drowned some time ago, that women that I told about and Obert told us the other story. An American who slipped out of his life jacket. It was not tight enough (he had made it looser, because I remember that it was very tight. For the lady’s it felt like a wunderbra).

Several rapids followed, the second one is rapid number 5 and listens to the terrifying name “Stairway to Heaven” then comes number 6, the “Devils Toilet Bowl”. Followed by rapid number 7 and 7½ “Gulliver’s travels” this is a 2 followed by 1 rapid. Maybe you are already thinking they started with 4 why, were is the number 1. Well number 1 is the Victoria Falls and is off course not to be taken. We started to joke with Obert, is this all. Are these grade 5 rapids, come on, it doesn’t feel like that. We were pulling his leg. They started to talk among each other because rapid 8 was coming up. A grade 3 at the side and a grade 5 in the middle. We had the choice where we want to plunge through. We decide in our invincible state of mind to take off course that grade 5, we couldn’t do anything else after joking with Obert. He let’s almost all the boats pass us before we go in.

Rapid 8 called “Midnight dinner” , who makes up those names. He steered towards the middle, grade 5 material. We were waving and laughing to the camera’s at the shore. And at the moment that we hit the rapid, it happens. One moment you are on top and the next you are down and under the water. I’m still holding the rope and I noticed that I’m under the boat. I feel with my hand and yes, I’m under the boat, I can touch to inner of the raft, it’s also upside down. I take some air and push the boat forward or myself backwards so that I come behind the boat. Yes the boat is also turned around. While I’m hanging behind the boat, still holding that rope off course, I see Rita 1 meter behind the boat floating in the white water, so I extend my hand and pull her towards the boat. We are hanging there now behind this boat.

Oooooops foutje, what's happening

The boat is rocking forward and backwards on the waves and each time that the boat moves backwards it’s hitting my head on I go under. It’s hard to breathe because I don’t know when I’m upside or down. I can’t control or predict the movement of the boat in the rapid.

Some moments later Guy is also resurfacing and he tries to climb over me, pushing me down. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. I jell to him and he calms down. Also the water is calming down. This whole episode seems to last for minutes, but it only takes maybe 20 seconds. At the other side of the boat are Bill and Marianne holding on to the what is now the front end of the boat. Another boat is coming to help them and Bill is getting caught between them both and goes under. He swallows a lot of water and thinks that his last moment was there. He lets go and he just floats through the rapid exhaust (just faster water but no waves any more). We see him floating there when we got back on the bottom-side of the boat (it was still upside down). Just before that we were trying to get on and we heard Obert jelling quickly the next one is coming, we have to get the boat back upright. This brings back some panic and I’m thinking oh no do I have to float through another rapid. But the next one was far away. Other boats picked up the couple from Johannesburg and Bill. They brought them back when we were back in the right position.

This was a scary experience, hanging behind that raft, you don’t see what is coming and you just hold on and try to keep your head above water. Hoping that it will end soon. But it doesn’t, it keeps on coming, the waves, the raft rocking back and forward, it doesn’t seem to end. And the most scary off all is that you only can see the waves coming out below the raft and the raft itself, because this was at that moment the whole viewpoint. You can’t see what is coming and just have to wait until it’s over. It seemed to last for minutes as I already told, but it was over very fast if you count the real time. Time is relative if you having an experience like that.

Afterwards we can talk about it and laugh with it. Until this moment we suspect Obert to flip the boat, because we were the only ones who flipped there and because they were talking about flipping a boat just moments before. But looking back on it, we are all glad that we had this experience (and nice pictures to prove it). But Bill was very quiet afterwards, he had thought that his last moment was there.
Then came rapid number 9 “Commercial suicide” , a grade 6 and therefore impossible to do. We had to carry the rafts around it by hand. A hell of a job across those flattened rocks. We put Bill here for several minutes on the rocks so that he could get his breath back. He lays there exhausted and if he doesn’t have any strength any more, his face is pale and his arms are strength less. We have a look at this commercial suicide and are all quiet when we see the power of the water.

Then there is rapid number 10 “Gnashing Jaws of Death” , we were hoping to keep straight and luckily we did. Because another flip would be too much for us, we were afraid to go in this one because of the experience before. This was the last one of the morning session. We go for lunch on the shores surrounded by rocks and the high walls of the Zambezi canyon.

Oru playground (photo Marianne)

Then it’s time to walk back out of the canyon. A nice 15 minutes walk, Obert said. Yeah, a nice 15 minutes walk, it was a very difficult 30 minutes climb, sometimes very steep and hard to do. The sun was shining, and carrying that life jacket and helmet to the top was no piece of cake. It was difficult to get a good breath and finally we reach the top. Soaking wet, no not of the water of the Zambezi but of our sweat from the climb. I have no condition any more. But everyone was puffing and huffing there. Even the guides or the people who had to carry some items to the top, like our lunchboxes or water-cans. Here we get some drinks and we can take the bus back to town. We get an invitation to see the video that evening. The other people who do the whole day rafting trip are going until rapid 19. We saw a lot of them back that evening.

On the certificate that we get there is this statement: “Volumes of water up to four times that of the Colorado River are pumped through narrow gorges creating the world’s most exciting one day rafting experience over grade 5 rapids - one level below the impossible!”

At 4 o’clock starts our sunset cruise on the Zambezi, we saw a little bit of wild life had some drinks and something to eat and saw a breathtaking sunset. OK not breathtaking but nice. Afterwards we went to see the video of the rafting trip. They started with a commercial video, with all kind of rafts flipping over on wild water rapids and people flying around. This water was very wild, luckily we didn’t had this water. Then you are thinking about your own experience and expecting a video not so spectacular. The video of the day started with some snapshots of the introduction and safety briefing, the climb down and then the mandatory jump in the water. Now are the rapids coming up, with that easier water. But great was our surprise that the water was as wild as on that commercial tape. Is this a part of that commercial video, no because we recognized our boat and yes the water was also that hard and wild. It doesn’t seem so when you go through it. And yes we saw a nice piece about our flipping over. And I saw my head coming from under the boat and this only last 1 second and that seemed already to take much longer there in that water. Yes it was very wild. This is what white water rafting is all about. A great experience and I will do it again if I have the chance.

Several other people out of the group went with us to see this video and they were impressed by it