He landed on the biggest island on the lip of the Falls – now called Livingstone Island – and from there obtained his first view of the Falls. He spent the night on Kalai Island upstream of the Falls, having come down river by foot, and the next morning set off in a small canoe to approach the thundering ‘smoke’.

In 1851, Dr David Livingstone first heard of the great waterfall but it was only in 1855 that he set out to visit it. There are trips by raft to the base of the Falls in low season called ‘the float of angels’. The delight of visiting the Falls in this season is the view of the impressive cliffs that form the basalt wall, and the magnitude of the abyss can be fully appreciated. At its lowest, around November and December, it becomes little rivulets running over the edge and in some places, no water falls at all. From October, as the dry season reaches its peak, parts of the Falls dry up. The aerial view (from microlights, helicopters or planes) at this time is spectacular, with clouds of spray rising high into the sky.Īs the flood abates, the actual view of the Falls gets better and better through the year until about September. Due to the masses of spray rising from the fallen water, the full width of the Falls cannot be seen on foot (and raincoats or umbrellas may be necessary). Peak flood season is around March and April when the full power of the Falls can be experienced in all its glory. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet.Īdditional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.Different times of the year provide completely different experiences of the Falls. Justin Wilkinson (Lockheed Martin / Earth Observations Laboratory, Johnson Space Center). The falls will continue to erode northward.Īstronaut photograph ISS007-E-14361 was taken Septemwith a Kodak DCS760 digital camera equipped with an 800mm lens and provided by M. The zig-zags represent subsequent positions, all with the characteristic water-worn lip on the upstream side. The earliest on this cropped view may have been the longest (dashed line). Prior positions of the strongly linear falls can be detected. The falls have moved upstream (bottom to top) by intense river erosion, elongating the zig-zag gorge in the process. The positions of the falls are controlled by linear fault lines in the underlying basalt rocks. The international railroad bridge over the second gorge (between Zimbabwe and Zambia) can be seen in the detailed view on the bottom (arrow). The small town of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe appears just west (left) of the falls, with smaller tourist facilities on the east bank in Zambia. The falls and their famous spray clouds are 1700 m long, the longest sheet of falling water in the world. In the sector imaged here, it flows southeast (top left to bottom right) in a wide bed before plunging suddenly 130 meters over the Victoria Falls into a narrow gorge. Details of the Falls are visible in this image taken with the 800 mm lens by Astronaut Edward Lu from the Space Station on September 4, 2003.Ī major river in south-central Africa, the Zambezi River flows from western Zambia to the Indian Ocean in Mozambique. Victoria Falls is one of the most famous tourist sites in subsaharan Africa.

Victoria falls images