There are rivers, and there are great big toss-you-about-and-spit-you-out rivers. The Zambezi is one of those. It’s a river which every year draws hundreds of adrenaline junkies, eager to test their mettle against her legendary churning, broiling rapids.

But she has a placid side to her too. Away from the rapids, where gorges flatten out to meet African savanna, a myriad hotels and lodges offer spectacular views of the Zambezi’s more languid side. It is here that adventurers repair to at the end of the day to sip gins and tonic as the flaming African sun slips below the water.

The more cautious may choose a gentle cruise on an old-style riverboat, passing yawning hippo pods and elephant herds come down to the river to drink, though the crown jewel of everyone’s experience here is the haunting cry of the fish eagle, virtually guaranteed as the last rays of the sun disappear.

For a truly African experience, the newly built David Livingstone Safari Lodge and Spa on the Zambian side of the river offers luxury four-star accommodation without encroaching too much on the thorny scrub and ancient tall trees that are this region’s heritage.

Unlike its crasser neighbours, still clinging to a colonial past with their white-washed walls and crystal chandeliers, the David Livingstone is a true bushveld blend of wood and thatch, her decoration provided by the continent’s craftsmen: gigantic ceramic bowls, light fittings of grass and beaten metal, doors and statuary carved from wood.

Every bedroom has a river frontage, its balcony doors opening wide to welcome the dawn chorus of bushveld birds: bee eaters, the half-collared and giant kingfishers, red-billed hornbills, bulbuls, plovers, cormorants, herons and giant egrets are among the more than 380 different species found in this area. The pool deck and the hotel’s two restaurants open out towards Siloka Island — a wildlife sanctuary in the middle of the river. At breakfast, lunch and in the evenings as summer’s energy-sapping temperatures dip, elephants wander down from Siloka to bathe, the smaller calves squealing with delight in the mud where crocodiles lurk.

“When they were building this hotel,” public relations executive Michelle Mashiah tells me, “the design called for a rim-flow pool, an invisible retaining wall its only barrier from the river. But crocodiles kept jumping into it — they can jump as high as a metre and a half out of water — so a beach, and a rocky outcrop were incorporated in the design to keep them out.”

That’s the thrill of holidaying in Africa. So much of this continent still challenges man’s dominance. Like the Zambezi and its rapids, the Victoria Falls, the searing heat… even the men and women on the Zimbabwean side of the nearby Victoria Falls bridge, who live and breathe and doggedly try to trade while the tyrant who rules them keeps trying to destroy them.

I met Chrispine Sibutali on the bridge at sunset. Disgorged from an old-fashioned steam train with a few dozen well-fed tourists, we spill onto the bridge to take photographs of the Falls. They’re disappointingly dry on the Zambian side (we’re too early for the summer rains) but our own woes are soon forgotten when Chrispine and his friends approach. They’re thin, and desperate. From under threadbare jackets handfuls of Zimbabwean dollars are produced — 100 billion dollar notes. “Please, please, do you have something to trade with me,” they beg, offering exquisitely carved sandstone, animals in wood, or copper jewellery when you decline their worthless banknotes. My heart breaks. I have nothing, my wallet locked away in my hotel room safe. “Your sunglasses,” Chrispine asks, but they’re prescription lenses and I can’t give them to him. I hand him my Shape-branded peak cap in luminescent pink. He smiles broadly, jams it on his head, holds my hand tight and thanks me a dozen times. Behind him, barefoot women and children stream across the bridge carrying single bags of maize meal.

Our group boards the train for the return journey, the Champagne we’re served by smiling waiters in starched whites leaving a sour taste as I think about Chrispine and the millions of his countrymen starving at the hands of a despot.

Just 10km away in Zambia’s Livingstone — an old colonial town of decaying Victorian tin-roofed houses flanked by wide verandas and impossibly crimson flame trees in full bloom — commerce thrives.
Livingstone was once the capital of northern Rhodesia, and a favoured holiday destination for people from the south. Today, it offers tourists a tidy and efficient airport link with Johannesburg, souvenir markets, banks, hotels, churches and newly constructed shopping centres. Hotels like the David Livingstone and the many tourist attractions nearby have provided hundreds of jobs to the town’s residents, people like Melvin Ndelelwa, a river guide on the Zambezi.

For several years now he has steered inflatable boats through the river’s 24 rapids, helping novice rafters negotiate these legendary wild waters. Melvin’s reassuringly calm manner and delightful sense of humour help to soothe my fears as we tear through a rapid. “I have never seen such big eyes,” he says, chuckling at my obvious terror as we push through another wall of swirling water.

By rapid three I’m wondering what on earth persuaded me that I love adventure sports; by rapid seven I’m on the adrenaline high of a lifetime.
Between rapids, the river flattens out and we have time to admire the soaring rock faces of the gorge, one coloured by a storeys-high painting of Nyaminyami — the snake-like river spirit said to grant rafters safe passage. Passing under the Victoria Falls bridge, we watch bungee jumpers bounce just metres from the water. I decide I’ll stick with Melvin.

We ride rapids for two hours. “Paddle hard forward,” Melvin shouts as we approach what looks like a washing machine on spin cycle. I want to throw myself into the bottom of the boat and cover my head, but that would mean letting down my five team- mates, so I keep paddling, the fear in my stomach churning in time with the water.

The boat dips, swirls, leaps, crashes back down and heads straight towards another broiling whirlpool. “Get down, get down,” Melvin yells and I land on my knees, hands desperately clutching both paddle and the safety rope lashed to the boat’s gunnels. We make it through without flipping over. The exhilaration is mind-blowing. Adrenaline, I decide, is definitely my drug of choice. By rapid 10, I’m exhausted, soaking wet and in love with the universe, endorphins coursing through every vein.

The hike out of the gorge dulls that love affair a little. It’s a searing 39nC and the gorge’s sides are steep. We crawl up, using ladders crudely lashed together from the branches of trees to haul ourselves to the top. The promise of ice-cold beers and bottles of Coca-Cola is what drives us to the summit.

My team-mate Richard Holmes, who has navigated these rapids before, has cleverly pre-booked a hot-stone massage at the David Livingstone’s Camelot Spa. I opt for a shower and my four-poster bed.

Over dinner that night, we rafters are heroes. Buoyed by my new status as tough cookie, I dish up lashings of goat stew from the buffet, which, fortunately, is delicious. The less adventurous opt for beef, fish or a chicken curry from the David Livingstone’s lavish outdoor buffet and we eat to a chorus of bullfrogs and hippo grunts, then at midnight, my team-mates and I slip off to the hotel’s sparkling blue pool to relive our adventure, tall glasses of crisp Sauvignon Blanc adding more colour to our stories.

The next morning it’s the turn of the micro-light flyers, returning from their aerial flips over the Falls to share their own brand of adventure.
For adventure lovers, this is the place to be: canoeing, gorge swinging, elephant-back safaris, white-water rafting, microlighting, bungee-jumping… the list is endless and the thrills unparalleled.

But if you prefer to keep your adrenaline in check, a gentle river cruise on the triple-storeyed Lady Livingstone river boat, a game drive or a spot of tiger fishing may be just what the doctor ordered.

As our plane lifts over the Zambezi headed back to Johannesburg, I whisper the words of that famous tough guy: “I’ll be back”.

What the lodge offers
The David Livingstone Safari Lodge and Spa has 77 en-suite bedrooms with satellite television, air-conditioning and room service. There are two restaurants, a swimming pool, a Camelot Spa, Internet facilities, a shuttle service to Livingstone airport, shops, markets and adventure attractions.

Activities include: white-water rafting, canoeing, microlighting and helicopter rides over the Victoria Falls, bungee-jumping and gorge swinging, abseiling, jet-boating, tandem-kayaking, horse- and elephant-back safaris, game-viewing, river cruises and a steam train ride to the Falls.

The David Livingstone Safari Lodge and Spa is administered by Three Cities Management, a leading hospitality management company offering an extensive collection of hotels throughout southern Africa.

For more info or to book, contact central reservations on 086-100-0333, e-mail: ceres@threecities.co.za or go to www.threecities.co.za