Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, February 5-6, 2016

The train ride ended up being excellent.  I had a great sleep and we arrived right on time.

Poppy, Jess, Adam, Rob and Mark enjoyed it too-

Lunch  was a delicious Tom Yum Koong soup with lemon grass, chilies, prawns and coriander-

This morning I took my first ever helicopter ride-

I sat in the front with the pilot and the views were amazing-

The falls are 107 meters high, 1.7 km wide and 1200 m3 of water drops/second-

The Zambezi River begins in north east Zambia and is 2693 km long, making it Africa's fourth longest.  It flows through 5 countries before emptying into the Indian Ocean-

We spotted zebra and giraffe-

This afternoon I paid $30 US to walk along the falls.  They are truly magnificent-

Zambia is on the right-

Victoria Falls is one of the seven natural wonders of the world along with the Northern Lights, Grand Canyon, Mount Everest, the Harbour of Rio de Janeiro, Paricutin Volcano in Mexico, and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.  

There are 3 different ways to measure a waterfall: height, width and volume.  At 107 meters, Vic Falls is not even in the top 800 but is the 10th widest (1737 m) and 13th largest by volume (1100 m3/second).  However, if you combine the 3 criteria, the 3 largest waterfalls are Niagara, Vic and  Iguacu in Argentina.  Niagara is much smaller at 51 m high and 1203 m wide but has tremendous volume at 2407 m3/second.  Iguacu is broken into 270 separate falls so it really depends what one is looking for when water fall shopping!  

Other activities offered are bungee jumping from the bridge, gorge swinging, zip lining and rafting. I had the best view of all from this great restaurant-

Supper tonight was at Boma where we had quite the variety of wild meat.  We started with a choice of eland or crocodle-

Other game available was eland meatballs which were grainy and warthog steaks which were a finer texture than beef and very tender-

The Guinea fowl stew was quite bony but tender and the kudu stew was probably my favorite: very tender-

Mopani worms were just crunchy shells-

Lamb roasting on a spit-

My favorite part though was the desserts!  Looking forward to a morning visit to Zambia to swim in Angel's Armchair.