The placid Zambezi river flows over a level sheet of basalt rock over the falls, passing numerous islands, surrounded by no mountains, deep valleys or escarpment for a considerable distance. All of a sudden, it changes character and drops down furiously into the chasm below, pouring 550 million litres of water into the Batoka Gorge 100 m below. The Victoria falls are 1.7 km wide and carry a torrent of whitewater over a series of rapids just below the falls. Rightly named by the Matabele as 'Mosi-au-Tunya' or the 'Smoke that Thunders', visitors are spellbound to see the spray of water rise almost 500 m skywards.

Local people and some early Arab traders and Voortrekkers knew the presence of the falls, but the first European to discover the falls was David Livingstone in 1855 (one of the islands he was paddled across to is named after him). He renamed the falls after his Queen and is responsible for making them popular in the western world. He described its beauty as 'scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight'. The falls are shared by Zimbabwe and Zambia and originally a bridge connecting the two was built in 1905 as a part of the Cape-to-Cairo railway project of Cecil Rhodes that never took place. The centre of the bridge now marks the boundary between them and is the location of the famous bungee jump.

The falls are made up of 5 separate falls. The Devil's Cataract, Main Falls, Rainbow Falls, Horseshoe Falls and Eastern Cataract, former four being in Zimbabwe and the last in Zambia. The Main Falls are the most majestic, falling 93 metres below and at the peak water flows at the rate of 700,000 cu m per minute. The spray from this section has nourished the area around it, an evergreen rainforest called the Victoria Falls National Park. The Rainbow Falls are named because of the beautiful rainbow that can be seen in the area. At full moon, a lunar rainbow can be seen that leaves the visitor amazed. They are the deepest of the series at 108 m high. The Eastern Cataract (second deepest at 101 m) are in Zambia but the view from Zimbabwe is beautiful.

The Victoria Falls National Park formed by the incessant spray, is a stunning rainforest of fig, mahogany and date palm trees with scarlet lilies and wild yellow gladioli carpeting the forest floor in the rains. There are around 400 species of birds including warblers, barbets, bulbuls, shrikes, louries, sunbirds and hornbills. You can find warthogs, vervet monkeys and baboons in the forest and 35 species of raptors in the gorges along with klipspringers and clawless otters. A variety of fish is found above and below the river like cod and trout.

The visitor can find 19 viewpoints on the lip of the gorge after walking through the forest on various paths, from where the falls can be viewed from one end to the other. The wettest viewpoint faces the Main Falls. Another way to view the falls is through an aerial activity aptly named 'flight of angels'. The falls are truly spectacular and the array of activities and sites to see ensures that the visitor has his dream vacation at the Falls!