Now, ultra-light is a far better way of doing this for the main reason that it's much, much cheaper and secondly because of the nature of the ultra-light itself. You see, the ultra-light is basically a death-trap. Some guy once decided that his hang-glider wasn't fast enough so he stuck a fan on the back of it. This worked until the extension cord came unplugged. So he got a really long extension cord and that worked until he was high in the air...and then came unplugged. After a few more tries, it was found that a motorcycle engine worked much better...even during pesky power cuts.
Of course, all this development cost money, and the way to make it back is to stick a tourist in behind the driver, so close you could remove the lice on his head (assuming he wasn't wearing a helmet...safety first, you know!) and do some free falls over the falls. The idea is that tourists – being the idiots they are - would pay to have their life pout in jeopardy.
Personally, I thought it was well worth the money.
Now, the big thing at Vic Falls is the white water, which in dry season (which it was when I originally sent this out) is meant to be some of the best in the world. Here, the tourist has two main ways to spend money risking their lives:
• rafting
• river boarding
I, of course, tried both.
Now river boarding basically involves going to some house and stealing an extremely buoyant ironing board (you can test the buoyancy in the bathtub if quiet enough not to wake the owners), putting on flippers and a life vest and jumping in the river with the sole intent of going under the rapids and (hopefully) popping up on the other side.
Rafting, on the other hand, involves getting all your chums who have never been in a raft together and try to keep this very unstable inflatable banana-like contraption from flipping over in the rapids.
Boarding is a solitary sport, apart from the guide and the other boarders with you. You follow the guide because, as he points out, if you go anywhere but where he tells you, you die. Once in position in front of the rapids you just sort of wait as there is nothing else you can do. You can try kicking with your fins, but the current being as strong as it is, it won't make a difference. Once you arrive at the rapids, you take a breath and hold on to your board in the hopes that your air will last until you pop back up again. And you always pop back up again, except maybe on your very last time boarding...in which case it will be your last time doing anything at all.
Rafting, on the other hand, is a team event. You spend the first couple of minutes practicing skills you will forget at the time of high stress when you'll really need them. The rest of the time is then spent listening to the river guide on the raft barking commands like "paddle hard", "back", "left", "right", which are rather useless since you forget what the all mean as you soil yourself when coming up to the first rapids.
And so begins the bumping of paddles, shoulders, elbows, heads etc. until the point in the rapid is reached where it's too late to do anything after buggering up the raft position so badly. So you huddle in the raft and wait and see whether it flips or not. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. Or as happened in our case, the raft was not very well inflated causing it to fold back over a rapid, some stayed in and others were flung out...I being one of them.
All in all, riverboarding seems much easier. You are already in the river, which will carry you where it wants to despite your best efforts so there is no reason to worry about how to not get thrown in. Rafting on the other hand is a tease. You're riding on top of a very bumpy river and you do everything possible to stop the big banana from flipping over, which is really what IT wants to do, given a choice. You are tricked into believing that if you work very hard, you won't flip, you’ll be fine and dry and all is good. The reality of it is that even if the thing does not flip, you get pelted by waves, may get thrown overboard and the raft is always full of water...and you’re knackered from all the paddling.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Vic Falls are pretty cool, too. You know...lots of falling water and stuff.
And finally...photos!
