Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, September: Stepping out of the aeroplane, the heat hit like a wall. You could feel the moisture being sucked out of your body. It was the midst of the dry season, and just before Suicide Month, as locals call October. Because then the dryness of the land and air ratchets up to intolerable levels, the dust swirls everywhere, and people get tetchy.
Come November though, and the rains sheet down and the world turns green with lush new growth practically as you watch. More and more water surges down the mighty Victoria Falls as the Zambezi fills. And joy takes over; you can almost taste it.
Welcome to KAZA, the vast Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA). It's a big place, and you need to set aside a chunk of time to really get to grips with its staggering beauty. It links five countries across southern Africa and it’s enormous. At 519 914km2 it’s bigger than Germany and Austria combined and nearly twice as large as the UK. And it caters to large-scale migrations of megafauna, including several Red Data List species that have global biological importance. It also helps the conservation of threatened species such as African wild dog, wattled crane, Nile crocodile and cheetah.
How to get about?
