LAST WAVE OF THE ZAMBEZI
My phone pings near the dregs of my second beer at Dropkick Murphy. It’s a new message from my connection Sean Edington, a river guide on the Zambezi. “It’s just started. You coming?” And there was a picture — a bad angle — but you could see the lip and the curl of the wave, and that was enough. The wave normally only lasts a week. Time starts now.
Things to organise: budgets, surfers, vehicle, passports, cameras, video, reflective jackets, fire extinguisher, cash, food, and shelter. Things to worry about: crocodiles, hippos, elephants, cattle, goats, trucks, potholes, roadblocks, bad drivers, the mighty river itself and the spirits that dwell within. At 3 a.m. on a Tuesday, with boards strapped to the roof, we hit the road.
Rapid 11 in the Zambezi is a uniquely weird surfing experience. Probably the most perfectly formed standing wave in the world, delivering an endless, overhead barrel. The fact that it breaks in a raging torrent, beneath a world heritage site in the heart of one of Africa’s finest nature conservation areas — a place where you must take real precautions to avoid crocodiles, hippos and elephants — just makes the whole experience surreal and wondrous.
Koby Oberholzer can sleep anywhere. The prodigious progeny of Frankie O, is crammed in the middle
