Travel Notes
The Hour Before the Falls Wake
At first light the Smoke that Thunders belongs to the baboons, the mist and almost no one else. Here is how to be there.
Most visitors arrive at Victoria Falls at ten, when the tour buses do. By then the light is flat, the spray is a crowd of raincoats, and the thing you came to see has become something to photograph rather than something to feel.
Go earlier. In the hour after sunrise the gorge fills with a low gold haze, the walkways are nearly empty, and the sound reaches you well before the view does — a low, continuous pressure in the chest that the Kololo people named Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Smoke that Thunders.
“You hear it long before you see it. That is the whole point of going early.”
Start at the Zimbabwean side's Devil's Cataract viewpoint, where the water first tips over, and work your way east toward the Main Falls as the sun climbs. Carry a dry bag for your camera; between December and May the spray can soak you within seconds.
Finish with breakfast on a lodge terrace overlooking the gorge. By the time the first coaches pull in, you will already have had the falls to yourself.
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