This week’s travel dream: The thunder of Victoria Falls

Locals call Victoria Falls, where Zambia's Zambezi River makes a 300-foot drop, "the Smoke That Thunders."

The lion may stand above all other animals, but the true king of the African jungle is water, said Peter Mandel in The Philadelphia Inquirer. I see this firsthand in Livingstone, a historic colonial city in Zambia where my wife and I are staying. Our lodge is near Africa’s fourth-largest river, the wide Zambezi, which gives life to the astounding creatures here, quenching “the thirst of hippos, elephants, and squadrons of exotic birds before exploding into spray for the 300-foot drop at Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwe border.” Locals call the falls Mosi-oa-Tunya—“the Smoke That Thunders.” But the rainy season has barely begun when we arrive; the falls are elegant, their thunder still to come.

Elephant herds are commonly seen along nearby riverbanks, and we hire a guide to help us find more wondrous animals in Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park. We spot “a few shy zebras and, eventually, a herd of sand-colored giraffes” before our car passes some huts that appear to have been systematically demolished. Our guide, who’s a bit of a mumbler, pins the blame on some of the great beasts we’ve come to see. “People stayed here, and the elephants became angry,” he says. He seems embarrassed to have to explain that the pachyderms encountered human inhabitants engaging in sex and didn’t approve.

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