The Chronicles Of Suntwe - Chapter Three: Into the Crack

By Paul Teasdale — The Chronicles of Suntwe

Some places don’t leave you. They cling to your skin. Bury themselves under your fingernails. Breathe through your memory like an old lover whispering across time.

Cataract Island had done exactly that.

After that first visit, something shifted in me. A hunger. A call. Not curiosity but rather a compulsion. I didn’t just want to explore more. I needed to. There was more to that place, and to myself, than I had touched. The island had peeled something back, and now it was demanding I go further.

Maybe one day ! Ha ha just kidding !

Tom felt it too. We went back often actually, sometimes kayaking, sometimes swimming across the channel. Every trip, we tried a new route, a new game, a new angle. But we always found the same truth. It brought out our boyhood. The island stripped us down to something raw and real. We’d splash in the rapids, climb through the trees, and for a few hours, we weren’t men with burdens. We were feral children again, playing on our private oasis while the world scrolled on somewhere far, far away.

No one could get there. No one could spoil it.

But even Neverland has its darker edges. And mine was found in the crack.

Literally.

Tom and I just chilling in our little world

There’s a geological fault line where the gorge is actively being eaten away by the waterfall at high water. It’s the future course of the river millions of years from now, that’ll be the new curtain of the falls. But for now, it’s just a jagged opening in the basalt. A perfect, private place to disappear.

I remember standing at its edge one hot afternoon. Sun burning my shoulders. Mist cooling my face. I looked down that sheer drop, and I knew. I was going to descend it. Right down to the base of the Devil’s Cataract.

Not for the thrill. Not for the story.

For the silence.

And for my father.

He had passed away that January. And I was still carrying him. Not only metaphorically but also physically. A small waterproof capsule, just enough to hold a teaspoon of his ashes. I’d been spreading him across the world ever since and I still am to this day. Remote places, wild places, places that felt sacred. This one felt perfect. The plunge pool below the Devil’s Cataract was a place he would have loved. And more importantly, it was a place no one else would ever take him.

I knew the only way to honour him properly was to earn it.

About to start drilling

The mission began.

We started scouting descent routes immediately. The walls of the gorge are vertical and a hundred metres high, slick with algae, and fractured by the perpetual onslaught of water and sun. No real trees near the edge for anchors. The basalt was brittle. Shards waiting to snap.

We’d need bolts. And ropes. And the right spot to place them. “The Crack” was it.

To bolt safely, I needed the right gear. Specifically, a powerful rotary hammer drill. Battery-operated would’ve been ideal, 36 volts, but good luck finding one of those in Zimbabwe, let alone affording one. Fortunately, my housemate at the time was dating a guy named Brendan. Handy bastard. Owned a drill that could chew through basalt like it was sponge cake but it needed a generator.

Safely clipped in to the first set of anchors

You’ve never truly lived until you’ve tried to get a 5.5kva generator to an inaccessible island in the middle of the Zambezi river, surrounded by rapids, waterfall and a hundred meter sheer drop.

Luckily, Tom had just fixed up his boat and knew a way through the rapids. He said we could take the genny through a shallow zigzag of river channels only a lunatic would even attempt. It was on.

We loaded up. Generator, bolts, tools, rope, dreams. Headed down to the boat club, packed the gear, squeezed the generator between the fishing seat and bow, and set off.

The ride was magic. Smooth at first. Then past a pod of hippos that hung off the point of Princess Elizabeth Island like gatekeepers of the river. Then came the rapids. Shallow and sharp, the kind that can destroy your hull and pride in one go. But Tom was a river whisperer. Navigated every twist like a man possessed.

When we reached the island, the falls welcomed us with a windless roar.

We parked at our usual spot, hauled the generator 200 metres across sunbaked basalt, barefoot, swearing and set up at the edge of the crack.

We didn’t speak much.

Tom set up his camera. I geared up. Rope. Harness. Anchors. The drill was still silent.

We placed the genny close to the lip and ran a 20-metre extension cord to the bolt site. I tapped the rock with my hammer listening for sound. A dull thud meant death. A sharp ping meant safety. The basalt wasn’t giving me many pings. This wasn’t going to be easy.

Eventually, I found two solid spots, drilled the first safety anchors, equalised them with slings, and clipped in.

I dropped down about ten metres to the ledge where we’d eventually launch our full descent and set to work on the primary anchors. Normally I’d set three bolts and call it a day. But this place demanded more. So I went overkill. Six bolts. Three pairs. Spread across separate rock faces. Redundant. Secure. Obsessively cautious.

Because there was no backup. No mountain rescue. No second chances.

Over my right shoulder, the Devil’s Cataract thundered down. A vertical ocean falling into the earth. The updraft soaked me in cool spray as the sun tried to boil my back. It was heaven. And hell. And everything in between.

A place like no other

Once the anchors were in, I just sat. Tom too. We didn’t talk. Didn’t need to. We’d done something few had ever done. And what came next would demand everything of us.

We could have descended that day. We were ready.

But we didn’t.

We both knew we didn’t want to rush it. We wanted the light to be right. The cameras ready. Our hearts open. I wanted time to say goodbye to my father properly not in a rushed moment wedged between setting ropes and scrambling back up.

So we packed up.

We carried the genny back to the boat. Navigated the river in silence. And as the sun set in front of us, I sat with the weight of it all. The beauty, the danger, the mission still ahead and whispered my thanks into the wind.

The real descent was coming.

But the island had already given us something most men never find.

A small clip of the bolting and the boat ride !

Reflection

There’s a kind of silence you only hear in places like that.

Not the absence of noise but the absence of bullshit. Of phones. Of plans. Of pretense. What’s left is you. Stripped back to the bone. Staring into a gorge with nothing but water, rock, and ghosts for company.

That crack in the earth became a crack in me. A split I didn’t want to close. Because for the first time in months, I felt something real. Not just pain. Not just grief. But purpose.

My father was a complex man. Brilliant. Flawed. Fierce. But one thing he gave me without even knowing it was the ability to fall in love with places like this. He taught me that some landscapes deserve reverence. That beauty isn’t always soft. And that some goodbyes are better said where the world still feels wild.

This wasn’t an adrenaline mission. It was a pilgrimage. And while I’d come with bolts and rope and reckless dreams, what I left with was something far quieter. I left with peace.

Not the clean, tidy peace they sell in yoga studios. The kind forged in mist and sunburn and risk. The kind earned.

And I think that’s what so few people understand anymore.

They chase comfort. Safety. Predictability. But some truths only reveal themselves when your feet are blistered, your heart is broken, and the river’s roar is louder than your own thoughts.

I didn’t just go back to that island for adventure.

I went to remember.

To honour.

To feel something sacred and become a little more sacred myself.