To Livingstone, and oblivion

On the way to Lusaka I had a brief stopover in Livingstone, a small tourist town which is pretty much devoted to adventure tours involving in one way or another the Victoria Falls and the impressive Zambezi River.
It was dry season so there wasn't as much water around however the falls were still spectacular, and there was the added bonus of not getting soaked by the spray generated by 900 million litres of water per second spilling over a considerable drop. This also meant it was possible to see something other than spray.
I took the obligatory chopper flight which provided great views but you could probably find better ways of spending your money if you've experienced a helicopter flight in the past.
We also walked around the Zambian side of the gorges around the Victoria Falls. Our taxi driver decided to play tour guide. As it was dry season the top of the falls were devoid of the raging torrents present at other times of the year which left a number of smallish swimming holes which were being enjoyed by the locals. After we left the swimming holes we could see from the opposite side of the gorge just how close some were to the edge. Unfortunately a young girl who was playing to close to the edge slipped and fell the 100+ meters down to the bottom. My group was right opposite when this happened, but we must have been very briefly looking away.
Probably the highlight of this trip was the white-water rafting. I'm not normally much of a daredevil however I decided to give it a shot. I didn't find out until the briefing that there were a number of grade 5 rapids during the 27km journey. How bad could it possibly be? Ignorance is bliss, and it's all too late once you're in the raft.
We managed to stay on through all the rapids apart from one known as 'Oblivion'. Our pilot suggested that there was almost no chance of staying upright in our smaller raft through this one so most of our 'crew' went to the bigger (and much more stable) raft in our group. Sure enough, within about 10 seconds of hitting the long stretch of rapids our boat had flipped and I was plunged into the raging maelstrom. I wanted to swim towards the surface but had no idea which way was up or down so just had to wait until I was spat out the other end, hoping my life vest would figure some of this out for me. I was under for what felt like a long time and I could feel my breath running short but I could also see that it was getting lighter so I figured that I was nearing the surface. Trouble was, it was like floating in foam and I was loath to take a breath until I was definitely clear of it for fear of sucking in a lungful of water.
I did inhale some water when I finally ran out of breath but thankfully one of the support guys in a kayak was nearby and I managed to grab on and he got me back to the overturned raft. A few minutes later our skeleton crew was back at the raft and the guide flipped it and we got back in. I spent the next few minutes removing the water from my lungs and getting my breath back.
Whilst my ride was quite wild a girl on another raft came off at a different set of rapids. Her experience must have been some orders of magnitude more tomultuous as she spent the rest of the trip lying prone across the front of the raft, both arms outstretched with hands gripping the safety rope running around the outside of the boat. She was also crying a shaking and wouldn't move, not even to a more stable part of the craft when heading through the final sets of whitewater.
I didn't find being in the rapids as violent as decent sized surf however it did seem way more out of control. The unpredictable flow of water, whirlpools, overhwhelming current and other hazards are truly something to be respected. For the curious, there's some youtube footage (not of my trip) here.