Beach

Full disclosure: this is not really about a beach. Fuller disclosure: I have never been here. Fullest disclosure: I will never go there.

I figure it’s October. A spider has taken up residence on my porch and either it’s a garden spider, which is supposed to bring good luck, or it’s a brown recluse spider, known for its bite which causes necroses of the tissue. Seeing as how it’s October and almost Halloween I am leaning toward brown recluse. It is fall, after all, and fright is in the air, which is why I am writing about this non-beach water destination. The scariest fall of them all: Victoria Falls, Devil’s Pool, to be exact.

Falls.

Located in Southern Africa on the Zambezi River between the countries of Zambia and Zimbabwe, Victoria Falls is listed as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Not bad for a waterfall that is neither the longest nor the widest but is still somehow the largest, my high school geometry somehow failing me. (This claim is based on a width of 5600 ft and a height of 360 ft, forming the largest sheet of falling water in the world.)

But that is not the scary part, not the width or the area, even the height. What is scary is this:

The edge of the edge.

Devil’s Pool, a natural rock formation at the very top of Victoria Falls in Zambia where (at certain times of the year) visitors can splash around in relative safety just a few feet away from where the waters of the Zambezi River cascade over the waterfall and plunge more than 100 meters into the gorge below. The thing that truly gets me is that the pool does not appear to have any sort of barrier (natural or otherwise) to protect swimmers who jump into it from being swept over the edge of the falls.

Just a little closer.

True, a photo from this vantage point would be spectacular. But at what cost? I, for one, am content to look at these stunning pictures of Devil’s Pool online. If I need a thrill I will take a photo of the spider on my porch, my hands not 3 ft. away from what is surely a silly garden spider. But you never know, which is why I would not, could not, swim in Devil’s Pool.

Could you?

Photos (in order of appearance): Zest-pk’s photostram, Fritz da Cat’s photostream, Quint Cobb’s photostream, all via Flickr.