EXTREME!

The town I've been in for the last few days, Livingstone, is known as the adrenaline capital of Southern Africa, or "adrenalin" capital as everyone here has decided to spell it. After seeing the mighty Victoria Falls, and as a way of releasing some steam from the trip with Wild Dogs, it seemed to be a good idea to partake in a few of the EXTREME! adrenaline activities that they have on offer here.

The EXTREME! activities began yesterday with a rafting trip down the Zambezi River. I'd heard of the Zambezi before, and knew it to be a pretty serious river for white water rafting in Africa, second only perhaps to the Nile at its source in Uganda. The rafting begins just beneath Victoria Falls, where something on the order of 1 million liters of water per second cascade over falls that are 108 meters high (360 ft) and 1.7km long (~1 mile). For comparison, Niagra Falls is 51 meters high and 1.2 km wide. Right now is the water's high season, so the volume of water going through these rapids is absolutely intense. I certainly have never seen whitewater rapids like this before, and I've rafted what was supposed to be a class 4 rapid on the Skykomish River back home. Compared to the class 4s that we went over yesterday, I would classify the Sky as about a class 1.

We flipped our boat on the first rapid, which hardly inspired confidence as we had 12 more major sets of rapids to get through. We managed to keep it upright for the rest of the trip, though I got sucked out once as did quite a few others. All in all, it was an incredible day. And the scenery in the gorge is absolutely stunning. At one point they let us jump out of the raft and swim down the rapids, and we got caught in a whirlpool--about four of us--just swirling around and around and around each other again before we finally got spit out. An incredible time.

That brings me to EXTREME! activity #2, which I've just now returned from (Mom, please stop reading here). Between Zambia and Zimbabwe is the Victoria Falls Bridge, which sits 111m over the river below. In the middle of the bridge is a little platform they've built so that adrenalin-hungry tourists can fling themselves off on either a bungee or a swing (more on that later). The bungee is the third highest in the world, and my god when you're standing on the platform about to jump off I can't imagine how anything could be higher.

I've skydived before, but for some reason bungee always just seemed crazy to me. Perhaps it's the immediacy of the whole thing: you jump off and 2-3 seconds later you're either still alive or, well, you're not. At least with skydiving you have a nice long fall, the ground is so far below you that it almost doesn't even look like it's approaching, and you've got a backup parachute in case things go wrong. I like the idea of a backup; I'm a backup kind of guy. But I took one look the other day from a distance at people jumping off the bridge, and I knew that I had to do it. If I was going to do a bungee jump, where better than the beautiful Zambezi gorge, nested in no-man's land between Zambia and Zimbabwe?

The initial feeling was of shitting myself on the platform, but the moment I jumped everything became very calm and I could just hear the wind rushing past my face and could see the river below quickly approaching. It felt more like flying than falling. It was absolutely, fundamentally exhilarating.

On the "swing", on the other hand, I felt more like a rock dropped off the bridge than anything else. You basically step off the platform, feet-first unlike bungee, and free fall until the rope catches you and swings you to the other side. For me this one was much more difficult than the bungee. I got great videos of both my bungee and a friend's swing, but unfortunately the internet is too crap here to get them uploaded. So, I'll post some pics below with a promise to do the video when I get back to the states.

(Victoria Falls Bridge, Zambezi River below, Vic Falls in distance)

(border w/Zimbabwe)
(seconds before the jump)

(looking down from bridge)

(Vic Falls, as seen from bridge)


(Zoe, about to jump off on the "swing"--you have to look closely in the photos below to see her)