Straddling the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, Victoria Falls – known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya or “The Smoke That Thunders” – is one of the world’s great waterfalls. Around one million people visit each year, most of them in daylight. But after dark, during the full Moon period, the experience changes completely.
I had not planned to be there at night. Just hours earlier, I had crossed into Zambia after a long, confusing border process from Botswana, exhausted from more than five weeks driving solo across parts of southern Africa. By the time I reached Livingstone, the only thing I knew for certain was that I wanted to see the falls.
Being there for the moonbow felt like a lucky accident. When I arrived at the park entrance about noon, a parking attendant asked if I wanted him to hold my parking spot until later that night. When I asked why, he explained that the full Moon was rising – and this was one of the rare nights when the falls might reveal their nocturnal rainbow.
So I bought two tickets – one for daylight and one for after dark.
That afternoon, I crossed Knife-Edge Bridge, a narrow 40m- (131ft) long span running parallel to one section of the cascade, and was drenched within seconds. The air itself seemed to turn to water, every gust of wind carrying a fresh barrage of heavy droplets that soaked through my clothes and skin. At each viewpoint, the falls revealed themselves in fragments – a vast curtain of white mist here, a churning void there – until finally, at the edge of the trail, the full scale came into view: a near-continuous curtain of water stretching across the horizon.
Stretching more than 1.7km (1.05 miles) across the Zambezi River, Victoria Falls is one of the world’s largest waterfalls.
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