Our Vacation to Victoria Falls

Our first family vacation - to Victoria Falls!

I went with a wonderful group of donors from Portland, who had funded water projects in Southern Zambia. It was very hot (105 degrees+) and dry and there was a tremendous need for water - both for health reasons (drinking unclean water is major cause of diarhhea and dysentery which can lead to death - especially for children under 5) and for crop production. We saw lots of borehole wells and lots of dry riverbeds where people were digging down to access water...I'll post more photos on another blog entry.

At the end of our time, the donors took a trip to Victoria Falls - and John and the kids joined me for four days.

The rainy season starts next month - so there has been almost 10 months of no rain and the Zambezi River (that feeds Vic Falls) had very little water running through it. You can see how there is only one trickle of water over the Zambia side of the falls - and to the left, the channel is deeper on the Zimbabwe side, so there is more water volume (see the water spray).

Looking down the canyon towards the Zimbabwe side of the falls

This is the famous bridge that people bungee jump off of!

John and I walked across the dry river bed and saw some amazing rock formations from the water pounding down the river.

We hope to visit the Falls again when there is water running over - and will share those photos with you - I'm sure it will be an amazing contrast. Apparently, you can see the spray for miles and when you walk where we were walking, you get drenched from the spray!