buys happiness: Ruacana Falls

On Sunday this weekend we checked out Ruacana Falls, the waterfall that our campsite was at the base of. Ruacana (and the Kunene River) are on the border between Namibia and Angola (it’s a good thing we got our Yellow Fever shots! Angola is Yellow Fever area.) When we arrived at our campsite on Saturday, we could just see the end of a waterfall (which I assumed was Ruacana). I was definitely wrong! On Sunday morning we packed up our tent and the rest of our gear and set out to find a viewing area for the falls. At first it was a bit hard to find a place to check out the falls because the signage was not very thorough. When we finally found a place we were amazed! It is huge and the water is flowing like crazy! We could see why they say Ruacana Falls is the Victoria Falls of Namibia! The mist sprays up as high as the falls (85 meters) through a two kilometre long gorge! The first place we staked out was more of an unofficial viewing area. To get to the official viewing area we had to leave Namibia, however the customs agent instructed us not to enter Angola (“they’ll ask you a lot of questions.”). We really had no interest in going to Angola anyway, but it was weird, Ruacana falls and the official viewing area for the falls are in neither Namibia nor Angola. They are in no man’s land. So we walked out of Namibia (if we would have turned to the right we would have been in Angola) and straight to the falls. Then we walked right back into Namibia, with out even stopping to look at the customs agent for Angola.

What we thought were the falls are on the left here (actually just a side channel). The actual falls are on the right, you can see how high the spray is and you can just see the top of Ruacana falls.