Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park protects the Zambian side of the Victoria Falls landscape beside Livingstone. The name Mosi-oa-Tunya is commonly rendered as “The Smoke That Thunders,” a reference to the spray and sound created where the Zambezi River drops through a basalt gorge. The waterfall is not simply a single viewpoint: its changing curtain, mist, river islands and steep-sided channels form a larger geological scene that continues downstream through a chain of gorges.
The World Heritage property is shared by Zambia and Zimbabwe and was inscribed by UNESCO in 1989. Its listed area totals 6,860 hectares, including 3,779 hectares of Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park in Zambia, 2,340 hectares of Victoria Falls National Park and 741 hectares of riverine strip in Zimbabwe’s Zambezi National Park. These figures describe the heritage property, not the whole area administered as a Zambian national park.