Victoria Falls: The Smoke That Thunders

Running rivers before they are dammed has become the perpetual chase of the international whitewater kayaker. But navigating the experience without falling in love with both the river and its surrounding community is tricky, at times traumatic. 

After witnessing the demise of the White Nile to large-scale hydro, followed by a twelve-year hiatus from international kayaking, I finally made the pilgrimage to the Zambezi. Images of this river have captivated me since my early teens. Re-entering this world of whitewater created a surge of passion to pair my experience as a photographer with my experience as a kayaker in order to document such environments as closely as I can. In trying to understand what hangs in the balance for this environment and its culture, I have never felt more hopeful that the local voice is being transmitted. But is it being heard?       

Few rivers make their presence known so distinctly whilst remaining hidden from sight – tucked in a cleft scored into an immense open plain, the mist rises and the drum beats louder than ever. I’m here, and whilst I won’t see the river until tomorrow morning, as the vapour rises above where I know Victoria Falls to be, the anticipation of what the Zambezi holds in store for me builds. The same images I obsessed over as a teenager, along with those very first beats of the drum, now flick through my mind.

I feel the heat on my skin – inhale – I take in the sensation of finally being here. My girlfriend Alex is sitting beside me ‘Africa looks great on you,’ she says with a smile as we roll into Livingstone, Zambia. Whilst I’ve never been here before, I have that strange sensation of content that comes from arriving on familiar grounds. Our driver pulls me out of my reverie, advising us to buy Nyami Nyamis – carved pendants of the serpent river god – before getting on the river. This deity is said to have flooded the river in the 1950s in response to the Kariba dam which separated him from his sweetheart downstream. We’ll take all the help we can get. 

Before we head into the Batoka Gorge, let me take you back some years, beyond the start of the beating drum of the Zambezi, to when this sense of needing to chase rivers took hold. ID2 by Shaun Baker was the first kayak movie I ever bought. It followed an unusual storyline of kayakers running man-made dams and weirs, prophesying of a sport that would fall into folklore after the rivers had all been dammed. It was a sad vision but one that clearly left its mark. As a remedy, I bought a second kayak movie, Wicked Liquid II, which showcased the kayaking elite of the era weaving through huge crashing rapids of the White Nile and Zambezi. Hooked, I set about manifesting a cold (faked is such a strong word) to allow me the next day off school so I could commit the moves and belting tunes to memory. Kayaking these rapids struck me as the perfect ambition… likely more than my careers advisor could cope with. The most chaotic, noisy, thrashing playground imaginable. Perfect.

Sat in the dusty pickup with kayaks overhanging the tailgate, we’re acutely aware of our heightened senses; of everything we see, hear and feel. Both Alex and I have a level of apprehension for different reasons. Alex is a highly capable kayaker with experience of Scottish and Alpine rivers, which run at volumes in the 10-50 cubic metres per second (cumecs) range. The Zambezi weighs in at approximately 500 cumecs for its rafting season. This puts it in the category of ‘big water boating’ and this is a perfect practice ground. Alex knows that in the next few hours, she’ll be getting her first taste of floating over the threshold into rapids that will crash overhead, hurl us over backwards, wrench at our paddles and blast out our sinuses – not necessarily in that order. I can see her picturing it in her mind. Imagine the sensation of queuing for a particularly terrifying roller coaster, then imagine that 21 times in a row. Take away the safety net, forget about the control switch and swap out the manmade rail and electrics with the raw power of nature and gravity behind you. Part of the apprehension in these lulls, as you approach something daunting with so much time to think, is second guessing what your reactions might be; Will I be able to paddle hard enough? Will I freeze up? Will I get a thrashing? Will I be able to roll back up? In big water the answer is ‘time will tell’. I have every confidence in Alex’s ability, and I’m excited to see her build that confidence herself.

Whilst I used to consider such rapids as my natural playground, my apprehension today revolves around questioning if I might have lost something in the interim. I can assuage the fact I’ll be rusty by setting my expectations appropriately and not ‘going too big, too soon’. Having been privileged enough to grow up kayaking and canoeing, ‘home’ to me has always been connected to the closest waterway. Journeying on the water has always felt natural, some of my earliest memories are of fishing off the back of a canoe with my parents. That connection is what I’m afraid I might have misplaced, as my relationship with water has felt somewhat hot and cold in the last decade, as I’ve spent more time looking to the mountains (can’t build dams up there!) and creatively immersing myself as a self-employed adventure photographer. 

Having bought Nyami Nyamis from our porters James and Manyando, we set about a sweaty warm-up before tucking knees into our boats and straining our sprayskirts on. The first splash of warm water as we slide off the rocks reminds us that this is in fact, very much not home. So too does the massive train of waves emerging from Rapid #1, which we need to cross to gain access to the gorge proper. It’s an intimidating first move as the waves pummel straight into a rock wall, causing a lot of messy, reactionary whitewater – exactly where you don’t want to be.

Set to make the move, we hear a blood-curdling scream. We look up to see a bungee-jumping backpacker mid-leap from the Victoria Bridge, followed by a massive bellowing jet-boat, hooning up the rapid. There’s a lot going on here, and whilst there’s a lot to be said for the tourism on offer, at this exact moment in time I’d love it all to bugger off. Alex and I chat about the timing as we watch friends we’ve met from New Zealand and Colorado navigate across the train of waves with varying degrees of success.