Description: The Zambezi Swing offers a full day of awesome adrenaline-pumped action which takes place in a scenic gorge off of the main Batoka Gorge near Livingstone, Zambia. Participants fly through the air, free fall and rappel down high cliffs to their hearts' content.
The crew will pick you up outside your Livingstone accommodations in the morning and drive you out to the site. You'll be fully briefed on all safety issues and given some light refreshments before you launch into the real fun.
There are three main activities - rappelling, the zip line and the mighty Zambezi Swing itself. In the first activity, you can rappel down a cliff while facing in the normal backwards position, or you can go forwards for an entirely new experience! The operators do most of the hard work for you, so you don't have to worry about falling to your death or working overly hard to get down to the bottom. The zip line is a lot of fun - you take a good run and then fly out into the air Superman-style while sailing over the beautiful gorge down below. Once you're ready for the big-time action, make your way over to the Zambezi Swing; this is essentially a giant tree swing out over the gorge. When you jump off, you free-fall for about 50 m before swinging in a giant arc. Once you've stopped swinging back and forth, you'll be lowered onto the solid ground at the bottom of the gorge.
You need to have only a modest degree of physical conditioning in order to participate in all of the fun. The hardest part is that you need to walk up out of the gorge once you've rappelled down or finished your swing. The walk up to the top takes about 15 minutes and is fairly tiring in the heat of the gorge; luckily there is a shady hut where you can drink some cold water on your way up in order to beat the heat.
After you've had enough of the high-energy action, you can chill out and watch your friends plunge off the cliffs while enjoying a few ice-cold beers (all included). There are also a few local people who sell wooden carvings (what else!) of varying quality; we found some nice items for a reasonable price.
The Zambezi Swing offers great value - you can do any of the activities as many times as you like; transportation there and back, refreshments, lunch and drinks at the end of the day are all included in the price. All of this will cost you about the same as one bungi jump, but you get a lot more bang for your buck. The day we were there, there were only about half a dozen other people, making for a nice intimate group where you can make some new friends.
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