I read plenty of materials about those, who traveled to Zimbabwe before us. I studied lives of famous explorers, who just made a way for us to get there and following their steps. I tis so exciting to come to places, where they had been standing decades or centuries befor us!

I met one of those guys nearby the Victoria falls. A border town i salso called after him: Davod Livingstone. A mighty statue of this missionary, traveller and explorer is situated next to huge waters. He watches at them and it reminds me a fact, that he had seen this natural beauty as a first European 16th November, 1855. I was captured by his eyes. He was born in Scotland in a poor family. Since his youth he was helping in the factory, but he was eager to study. He learnt Latin and mathematics, and later he studied medicin and theology. He graduated in the University of Glasgow in 1837 and soon after that he set out for Africa to spread the gospel. It was his mission, that is why he is holding the Bible in his left hand. It may be exactly the Bible we saw in the museum of Bulawayo.

I also have to think of three famous Czech people, whose deeds imprinted in this area for ever: Emil Holub – the author of first map of the falls and of the book „Seven years in Africa“, and two engineers Miroslav Zikmund and Jiri Hanzelka, whose books andout the travel around the globe became best-sellers not just in their native home country.

I am thinking about notes that these people have written down into their diaries after they had seen these fascinating place, where flow so much water during a rainy season, that the amount heading down the abys in three and half days equals the consumption of the whole New York in one year!

Emil Holub wrote down: „..terrible rumble of many waters flow in the air and was heard as a continuous roar of the thunder miles away from this place…“

David Livingstone has described an impression  in such a way: „I can compare these huge waters to myriad’s shining, a cluster of tiny comets flying the same way, each one having a tail of white foam.“

Hanzelka and Zikmund were amazed as well. „Whirlwind tears out tons of waters crashing down the canyon into zillions of little drops and carrie them up to the blue sky above us.

Rumbling. This is perhaps the most exact word describing a huge stream of the Zambezi river, heading down the abys from 107 metres. Miilions of cubic metres of water is bubbling and little drops really rise up in air whirlwind. If you have not rain coat, you are wet in a few seconds. It does not matter, if you are are perceptive, you forget rain, you forget time. You focus on a beautiful rainbow, that calms you down and cheer you up. Giant, outbound, cleare and clearer rainbow. Her eis the place, where I must think of my own nothingness. That is why David Livingstone have just uttered: „I called them Victoria Falls.“ Nothing more, nothing less. No words can really describe such a spontaneus element.

This place is now absolutely different from time of Emil Holub (1873) or Hanzelka + Zikmund (1948). Thousands of tourists everyday, animals withdrawn to natural parks around the catarct.  Water falls are still the same. Still majestic. Nothing can diminish their mighty roar, colors of the rainbow, fresh sweetsmell of wet air. In the dialect of ndebele it is called Amanza Thunquayo, which means „Water that rising up“: Later on it has been re-called to  Mosi-Oa-Tunya („The smoke that roars“).

When I am leaving, I cant stop turning around and understand a sigh of Emil Holub, written in his famous book: „If I regret anything, i tis a fact, that I can not spend here more than just three days…“

Many greetings from František