“Once, when we were teenagers, my friend saw a hippopotamus fall over the edge.”

These were the words that prompted my brother’s single-minded determination to see Victoria Falls during our trip to Zimbabwe. The rest of us were thinking, well, world famous site of incredible natural beauty. My brother? Schadenfreude. He really, really wanted to see a dead hippo fall over the cliff edge, and not much else seemed to register.

Which was a shame, because had I not been fortunate enough to have seen them already, Victoria Falls would’ve been pretty far up the to-visit section on my Bucket List.

I mean, sure, I’d seen them before. On telly, the web, and in magazines: the usual lot in which you, dear reader, may well have done so too. But there’s a difference, isn’t there? It’s like a much cooler version of badges on your Girl Guides sash. There’s a similar element of necessary experience. Often, adult supervision (read: funding) is required. Sometimes, there’s danger. (And if you don’t think the metaphor fits, then clearly you have not tried the more adventurous Girl Guide badges.) 

I’ve been lucky. My Dad’s a pilot, which means that we spend an awful lot of time in the air. I took my first flight when I was 20 months old and shudder to think of either my fellow passengers, back then, or my carbon footprint presently. The upshot, however, is that I have accrued a handy, patchy, spark notes scrapbook of memories. It means that I have not only personal experience of several bucket-worthy destinations, but wanderlust for dozens more.

To return to the beginning, then.

The Kololo tribe who lived nearby in the 1800s knew Victoria Falls as Mosi-oa-Tunya. This can be translated as  ‘The Smoke That Thunders.’ In 1855, David Livingstone, missionary, physician, and lion-fighter (he lost the use of his left arm to one such creature in 1843) was the first white man to lay eyes upon this extraordinary site, which he christened after Queen Victoria. Though I do not doubt that she was a formidable lady, I have to say I prefer the Kololo name. It’s certainly more accurate.

The Falls are 1688 metres wide, 108 metres tall, and on average, more than 500 million cubic litres of water fall over the edge per minute. The basalt cliff over which the water tumbles, way down into the Zambezi below, stands opposite its sister, who is blanketed by lush, well hydrated rainforest. You have several choices concerning your view: you can follow the path through the rainforest and stand on the opposing cliff edge (you’ll get very damp, but this is unlikely to matter. Not only is the Zimbabwean sun rather hot, and good at evaporation, the sight is breathtaking, and a soft, rainbow-studded cloud of vapour is not the greatest of hardships.)

If you don’t fancy the path, all green grass and glimpses of white water through vines hung with monkeys, then you could choose to visit Knife-Edge Bridge. It has perhaps the best view of the Falls, and the deliciously named Boiling Pot, where the river turns down Batoka Gorge. It’s also a connection between Zimbabwe and Zambia. When I’m feeling cheeky, I say I’ve been to the latter, though in truth I never stepped on Zambian soil.

The third place you could visit, if you suffer a self-preservation malfunction, is the aptly named Devil’s Pool, situated upon the waterfalls’ edge. Made famous in  2011 by Human Planet, even our guide, (Mr Hippopotamus) said he wouldn’t go near it. The choice is yours.

It’s difficult to explain why this is so necessary an experience, if it’s ever a feasible option for you. I could offer the hackneyed, valid point that seeing something second hand is not the same as seeing it in person. I could tell you that it’d not be the same without mist kissing your skin, and that great, rumbling noise which sounds like the earth sleeping crashing into your ears. I could say that without the bright, green-filtered light of the rainforest, or the brief, ephemeral webs of rainbow in the spray, you could not capture the scene. I’ll leave you instead with Livingstone, having stumbled upon a sight he could not have dreamt, insisting "no one can imagine the beauty of the view from any thing witnessed in England [though] scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."