Tongabezi Lodge

A fish eagle calls over the Zambezi about 20 kilometres upstream of Victoria Falls, and the cottages of Tongabezi Lodge, outside Livingstone in southern Zambia, line the bank beneath tall riverine trees. Here the river is broad and slow, broken by islands and sandbanks, and gives no hint of the drop that waits downstream. The lodge has been owner-run since it opened, and that shows in the way rooms, meals and outings are shaped around each guest rather than around a timetable.

History

Ben Parker and Will Taylor started Tongabezi in 1990, beginning with a handful of rooms and canoe trips on the upper Zambezi. The lodge grew slowly along the bank, adding cottages and individually designed houses, and later opened a small island camp downstream, Sindabezi. The Parker family has stayed closely involved throughout.

From its early years the lodge also put money and effort into the surrounding community. Its best-known project is Tujatane, a school set up for children from the neighbouring villages and the families of staff, which guests can visit.

Rooms and suites

Accommodation comes in two forms: cottages along the river bank and a smaller number of larger houses. No two are alike. Several have no front wall at all, so that the bedroom opens straight onto the river, with mosquito nets, thatch and shutters doing the work that glass does elsewhere. The best known is the Tree House, built against a rock face beside the water, its bed facing the river. Other houses have plunge pools and decks of their own.

Sindabezi Island, a few kilometres downstream, is a smaller and simpler camp of open-fronted chalets, lit by lanterns at night, for guests who want to sleep on the river itself.

Dining

Meals at Tongabezi move around. Breakfast may be on a deck, lunch on a boat and dinner at a private table set on a rock, a sandbank or an island in the river, lit by lanterns. Couples are often given a table of their own, away from other guests, which has made the lodge a long-standing choice for honeymoons. The kitchen cooks to a daily menu and handles requests easily.

Location

Victoria Falls, Mosi-oa-Tunya in the local name, the smoke that thunders, draws most visitors to this stretch of the river. The falls are about 1.7 kilometres wide, shared between Zambia and Zimbabwe, and were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1989. Their character changes with the season. Around April, at the height of the flood, spray rises high above the gorge and the Zambian side is hard to see through it. Late in the dry season the flow drops sharply, and much of the Zambian rock face stands bare.

David Livingstone reached the falls in November 1855 and first looked over the edge from a small island on the lip of the drop, now called Livingstone Island. Tongabezi runs the excursions there, and when the river is low enough, in the second half of the year, the trip includes a swim in Devil's Pool, a natural rock pool on the very edge of the falls.

On the river itself the lodge offers canoeing, sunset boat trips and fishing for tigerfish. Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park, close by, has white rhino that can be tracked on foot with armed scouts. Chobe National Park in Botswana is near enough for a day trip.

As one of the longest-established luxury lodges near Livingstone, Tongabezi is used to arranging every transfer. Harry Mwanga Nkumbula International Airport, on the edge of Livingstone town, is under half an hour away by road.