Victoria Falls is a waterfall people end up booking three times.
From a helicopter it is a crack in the plateau with a cloud standing over it. From Livingstone Island you sit in the river a metre from the drop. From a raft in the gorge you are looking up at the whole thing. Reviews of the flights, cruises, rafts and safaris that run out of Victoria Falls, priced.
A morning on the rim, a day in Chobe, and the river at five o’clock.
The four bookings a first trip to Victoria Falls hangs off. What each one costs, and what the travellers who took it said.
01The first morningZimbabwe & Zambia: Guided Tour of the Falls from Both SidesBoth sides of the gorge in one go, passport in your pocket. Zimbabwe holds the long panorama, Zambia puts you out on the lip.
02The day in BotswanaChobe National Park Day Trip with LunchNinety minutes and a border post from town, on a river carrying the heaviest elephant numbers in Africa.
03The evening2-Hour Luxury Zambezi River Sunset CruiseUpstream of the drop the Zambezi goes wide and slow. Hippos surface off the bow, the sun drops fast, the boat turns for home.
04The last nightBoma Dinner and Drum ShowDrums, a fire, and a plate of everything the country grills. The mopane worm is optional and the drumming is not.
Almost everything here starts within an hour of the Victoria Falls bridge.
Rainforest paths along the rim, twelve minutes over the gorge, a border run to the Chobe floodplain, a flat mile of river at sunset, the rapids underneath the bridge, and a swim at the edge when the water drops.
Four parks are in reach of Victoria Falls, and they make four different days.
Chobe is a border post and a floodplain full of elephant. Hwange is Zimbabwe’s biggest park and a long drive each way. Zambezi National Park starts twenty minutes from town. Matobo is granite hills, rock paintings and rhino tracked on foot.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · Chobe National Park Day Trip with Lunch
Chobe, in BotswanaBoat cruise, game drive and a border post before breakfast.
Zambezi National ParkThe park on the doorstep. Out at dawn, back for lunch.
HwangeThe big one. Waterhole hides, and most of a day in the vehicle.
Matobo HillsBalancing granite, cave paintings and rhino on foot.
Every safari day we have reviewed →
The Victoria Falls days more travellers take than any other.
The whole Zimbabwe catalogue →Eight tours carrying more travellers than anything else on the river, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Helicopter Scenic Flight over Victoria Falls 12-13 minutes Flight
Take a 12 to 15 minute helicopter flight over Victoria Falls from a helipad in Zambezi National Park. Expect hotel pickup, a safety briefing, bubble windows, and broad views of the Falls, Batoka Gorge, Zambezi River, and nearby wildlife areas. The experience lasts about 45 minutes in all.
From · $135
Read our review →
2
Dinner Cruise on the Zambezi River
from $110
3
Chobe National Park Day Trip with Lunch
from $170
4
Boma Dinner and Drum Show
from $60
5
Helicopter Tour with Hotel Pickup
from $180
6
2-Hour Luxury Zambezi River Sunset Cruise
from $69
7
Zimbabwe & Zambia: Guided Tour of the Falls from Both Sides
from $63
8
Zambezi River Class IV-V White-Water Rafting from Victoria Falls
from $140
Above the falls the Zambezi carries a drinks tray. Below them it does not.
Upstream the river spreads out flat and mile-wide, and half the town is on it by five. A kilometre downstream the same water drops into a basalt trench and turns into one of the hardest commercial rafting runs anywhere.
The whole sheet of water only fits in one frame from above it.
A helicopter puts you over the main cataract and the six zigzag gorges the river cut behind it. A microlight does the same with the door off and no camera of your own. The bridge holds still, 128 metres over the water, and lets you walk out underneath it.
Every flight over the falls →
What a day out of Victoria Falls actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. The rim walks and the sundowner boats sit well under what the flights and the border days ask for.
Rim walks with a guide, the bridge, sundowner cruises and the transfers that get you around town.
The standards: the Chobe day, a helicopter slot, a full day on the rafts, an evening at the Boma.
Hwange and Great Zimbabwe, private guiding, Devil’s Pool with lunch, and the multi-day river trips.
Four Victoria Falls bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this town can be sorted out over breakfast the day before. These four run on river levels, capped slots and a border queue that takes no interest in when you land.
- 01Livingstone Island Tour & Devils PoolNumbers on the rock are capped per slot, and the pool only opens when the river is low enough. It goes further ahead than anything else here.
- 02Helicopter Scenic Flight over Victoria Falls 12-13 minutes FlightFlights run in twelve-minute rotations off one pad, and the smooth early-morning air is the slot everybody asks for.
- 03Chobe National Park Day Trip with LunchIt is a border crossing as much as a game drive. The seat, the boat cruise and the lunch are one booking, and they fill in that order.
- 04Zambezi River Class IV-V White-Water Rafting from Victoria FallsThe rapid list changes with the water. The full-day low-water run has a season rather than a timetable, and the flood months close half of it.
Victoria Falls in April is not the same waterfall as Victoria Falls in October.
February to May the Zambezi is in flood. Spray climbs higher than the falls themselves, the viewpoints are a soaking rather than a view, and Devil’s Pool and the upper rapids are shut. By September the flow is off, the basalt face comes out from behind the cloud, and everything you swim in or paddle through opens up again.
Zimbabwe does not stop at the end of the gorge.
Granite hills stacked like dropped luggage in Matobo, with four thousand years of rock painting under them and rhino tracked on foot. A stone capital near Masvingo that gave the country its name. Villages along the river that take visitors properly. None of it is a morning off, and all of it is why people extend.
- 1Zimbabwe Traditional Village Tourfrom $50
- 2The Best of Matobofrom $140
- 3Matobo Rhino Encounterfrom $120
Three things Zimbabwe has that nowhere else can copy.
Waterfalls and game parks turn up all over Africa. A swimming pool at the lip of the largest sheet of falling water on earth, a stone city built without mortar, and the Boma’s drum circle do not.
Devil’s Pool
A lip of rock sits a few centimetres under the surface at the top of the main cataract, and when the Zambezi drops far enough a guide walks you out to it and lets you lean over the drop. Boats leave from the Zambian bank, numbers per slot are capped, and the season runs roughly August to January. In flood it simply is not there.
- 1Livingstone Island Tour & Devils Pool★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 235 reviews
- 2Small-Group Devil’s Pool and Livingstone Island Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 94 reviews
- 3Livingstone Island and Devil’s Pool Walking Safari★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 38 reviews
Great Zimbabwe
Dry-stone walls eleven metres high, laid without a drop of mortar, enclosing a hill fort and a great elliptical building that held a trading capital in the fourteenth century. The country took its name from it. It stands near Masvingo, a long way southeast of the river, which is why almost nobody at the falls gets there.
- 1Great Zimbabwe★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 11 reviews
- 2Great Zimbabwe Tour from Harare★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 6 reviews
- 3Great Zimbabwe: The World’s View Historical Site !!★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4 reviews
The falls themselves, close up
By kind of day: park, river, gorge or table
The order almost everybody ends up doing Victoria Falls in.
The river
The gorge
The last nightNewest out of Victoria Falls and the parks.
Everything else that just landed →
2 Hour Stargazing Tour in Victoria Falls NP Area in 4×4
Read our review →
5 Day Victoria Falls and Hwange National Park Accommodated Safari Tour
Read our review →
MASVINGO; GREAT ZIMBABWE MONUMENT TOUR – FROM HARARE
Read our review →
Great Zimbabwe: The World’s View Historical Site !!
Read our review →
Victoria Falls Safari with Lunch and Sunset Cruise
Read our review →
