A “moonbow” is one of nature’s rarest sights – and Victoria Falls is one of the few places on Earth where travellers might catch it.
The first thing I noticed was not the darkness, but the sound.
It began as a low, distant rumble, easy to mistake for wind. But as the path narrowed and the trees thinned, the noise deepened into something more primal, swelling into a relentless roar that pressed against my chest. By the time I reached the edge of the waterfall, the sound was no longer just something I heard but something I felt, pounding through me like the blood through my veins.
There were no floodlights. Only the pale wash of a rising full Moon and the thick blue-black ink of the Zambian night. Beyond the darkness, water plunged more than 100m (328ft) into the gorge below, sending vast columns of spray high into the air.
Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, the reason we had come began to take shape: a pale smudge in the spray, easy to miss unless you were looking directly at it. Then a curve emerged: a soft, luminous band stretching across the darkness, suspended above the gaping gorge below.
This was the “moonbow” – a lunar rainbow formed not by sunlight, but by moonlight.
A lunar rainbow forms when bright moonlight refracts through mist creating a rare nighttime rainbow effect.
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