What are the most worthwhile things to do in Victoria Falls on a first visit?

A first visit divides into three experiences, and only one of them is the waterfall. The viewpoint trail runs through the Falls and Rain Forest zone, a controlled 0.45-square-kilometer strip facing the curtain of water. Downstream sit three separately managed gorge zones — Gorges Red at 4.1 square kilometers, Gorges Yellow at 5.7 and Gorges Green at 16.7 — which is where helicopter and boat activity over the river is concentrated. Upstream, the Upper River and Islands zone covers 11.5 square kilometers of flat water above the lip, including Cataract Island.

The scale is worth fixing in your head before you choose. The drop is 355 feet (108 meters) and the lip is 5,604 feet (1,708 meters) wide, fed by a river that runs 2,700 kilometers through six countries from northwestern Zambia to the Indian Ocean.

Wildlife is a real part of the day, but not the postcard version. ZimParks describes the area as home mainly to baboons, warthogs and monkeys, with leopards seen only on rare occasions. Neighboring Zambezi National Park, 530 square kilometers of it, carries the big-game expectations; the Falls park is 4 percent of their combined 583 square kilometers.

Timing inside the day beats timing inside the year for the viewpoints, because the trail faces the spray and the light swings across it.

The forest along the trail exists only because of the river: a dense, dripping band of mahogany, palms and liana sitting in permanent mist while the dry bush starts a few hundred yards back. On a high-water morning the roar makes conversation difficult, and the handrails run wet.

Criterion (viii) in the 1989 UNESCO inscription is about geology, and it explains the zigzag of gorges below the Falls — the river has cut back along a series of fracture lines, abandoning one lip after another. Reading the gorges as earlier waterfalls turns the helicopter or gorge-rim portion of a visit from a thrill ride into the clearest view of how the site was made. Camping is no longer permitted on the Zambezi riverbank inside the park, though it is allowed at Chamabonda Vlei.

• Early — Take the Rainforest trail at opening, before coach groups and while the light is still angled into the gorge.
• Middle of the day — Shift to the gorge zones or the upper river, where being out on the water or above it beats standing in the spray.
• Late — Use the upper-river stretch above the lip, the flat-water side of the same park.

Four gates serve these parks — Zambezi Drive, Chamabonda, Km 16 and the Rainforest — and each entry day is charged again. The town itself holds about 50,000 residents and roughly 4,000 beds, with peak tourist numbers approaching 4,000, so high-water months press hard on accommodation. CDC lists Zimbabwe under a Level 1 East African Sleeping Sickness notice and a Level 1 Global Measles notice. ZimParks recommends earthy colors and advises against bright red, yellow or bright green for anyone heading into the bush sections.

Read the when-to-visit answer in this group for the Zambezi's flow cycle, which determines whether the viewpoints or the gorges show better.