Zambia Swimming

I'm in Cape Town chilling on a rainy morning so I thought I'd throw up so words to go with the pics I put up yesterday. Someone was waiting for the computer at my hotel so I threw up the pics only yesterday.

We were only in Zambia for a few days, but we (and especially me) crammed in alot of activity. I did the bungee jump, gorge swing, zipline combo over the gorge below the Victoria Falls the day we got there. The next day we went whitewater rafting in the morning and then did a short helicopter ride over the falls to get a very enlightening aerial view. I'll add some of those pics later if I get a chance.

The whitewater rafting was fairly insane, but a TON of fun. We did a half day which is about half the rapids you can do, but they are supposedly the craziest ones. We did 9 of the 10 "official" rapids - they didn't count the class II/III rapids in the 10 count and one of the 10 was a class VI called "Commercial Suicide" that we walked around.

Victoria falls is on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe (the Zambezi River marks the border). It is 1.7km wide and about 105m high (the bungee from the bridge was 111m). Once the river reaches the bottom of the falls, it runs thru a narrow, zig-zagging canyon, which is where we rafted.

The first rapid is a gnarley class V called The Boiling Pot that you have to approach sideways because of where the entry point is. They used to enter upstream a bit to hit it head on, but years ago a giant boulder fell up there and killed some porters so they had to move the start for safety reasons. We didn't make it thru on our first attempt, but made it out to try again and got absolutely pummeled on the second try. That's the photo you see where only John and the guide, Potatoe guide are visible because the rest of us are underwater. The other shot with the rocks in the background (at the bottom of the post) is right before we enter the full rapid.

I just watched the video they filmed of us and it looks like we were each underwater for anywhere from 10-14 seconds! I was not as scared as I probably should have been. I'm not sure if I was held down or had been sucked down deep (the river is about 50m deep there) - probably some of both, but I did start realizing how long I was under and then finally came up right before I couldn't hold my breath anymore. Quite an intro to the river and the day at 9am.

The 3 pics where we are heading right to left (including the one where more than half the boat is underwater, but upright) are from one of the class Vs that we actually stuck- believe it or not.

The other 2 shots where we are going left to right are from our second class V wipe out of the day, which came fairly early. We were starting to feel like we didn't really need the boat at that point. It was a quite crash, but none of us where held under for nearly as long as the first rapid.

The other boat with us ended up flipping on 2 rapids as well, but they were completely different ones then we flipped on. The guides mentioned that the day had "alot of action."

Some of the people we rafted with recommended sitting in The Devil's Pool which is a little pool at the top of the falls literally right on the edge - something you can only do in low water months like now (low water months also make for crazier rafting). Rob, Tim and I got up early to do that the next day before our flight to Cape Town. I'll put up a pic later.

I wish it would stop raining here already.