Victoria Falls: Cliff Diving

If everyone jumps off a cliff, would you?  The answer to this childhood lesson is yes.  However, the dumbest (most dangerous) thing I did on my Victoria Falls trip was to cliff dive (okay, so it was a jump) into the rushing waters of the lower Zambezi river without a life jacket. 

So how did I get suckered in?  In the national park that surrounds Victoria Falls you can take a trail that leads to the lower Zambezi river.  Along this trail we kept seeing spray painted pink arrows.  Initially, we thought it was to guide you down the trail to the water, but once we got to the water we realized that the arrows kept going along the waters edge.  As curious as we were to find out where the arrows led, we waded in an eddy current in the river first.  Cuz, you know, we have to indulge in every immediate and slightly dangerous thrill that comes our way.

After the allure of the wonderfully cool but not cold water wore off, we followed the arrows.  We bolder hopped for a bit and then came across a relatively new climbing rope tethered to the rocks that led to no where but the water.  After a few puzzled seconds past it dawned on someone that this was the makings of a rope swing.  Not so much a swing, but a means to cliff dive/jump into the water AND pull yourself back to the shore.

Truthfully, I was skeptic but everyone attributes such things to my being several years older than the rest of the group.  Regardless of my opinion, everyone jumped and it looked something like this.

After watching my fellow jumpers happily survive, I decided to leap, too. 
And now for my feature film cliff jump in HD.

You might have noticed that I didn't jump quite as high as the others, but I had a lot of fun doing it.   

Click here to read more about my Victoria Falls trip.