On an outing with his friends and their wives and girlfriends, Roy George Tinashe Dikinya, 40, missed a step and slipped as he walked parallel to the edge of the gorge.
The surfaces were wet and slippery due to heavy rain, and he could not catch his grip, slipped against the rocks and eventually fell from about 108 feet, his friends told CNN.
Dikinya, originally from Harare, lived in Victoria Falls for a year and knew the area well.
His body was found on January 2, but the rescue area was difficult to access the area as the river was high after heavy rains.
People have drowned on the site before, but this was the first time anyone had fallen into the gorge, Farawo said.
A video seen by CNN shows his body being lifted over the edge of the cliff with a zipper and pulley system. The rescue also involved the army, miners and volunteers from the tourism sector, Farawo added.
Dikinya was a fitness instructor and the father of twin boys, Trey and Lionel, and two girls, Hayli and Taya from a previous relationship.
“My hope shortly after the drop was that he would make it, because he is fit and strong and a good swimmer,” his partner Mazwi Shamu said during a telephone conversation with CNN as he transported Dikinya’s remains to Harare on Thursday. has.
“I had so much hope that he might have clung to a rock or fallen into the water and swam to the shore.”
The couple were planning to announce their recent engagement to friends and family and planned to travel through Asia, Shamu said.
“He was determined and a hard worker who wanted a life of his own,” his mother, Eileen Gowera-Dikinya, told CNN by telephone. He used to crack a lot of jokes and was an entertainer, she added, laughing at some of her memories of him.
Dikinya was a food lover, determined to help others lead a healthy lifestyle, his mother said.
He built a gym at his home so that locals could come and exercise and encouraged people around him to exercise and eat well.
He was a football fan and a fan of Dynamos Football Club in Harare and regularly attended matches on Sundays, his best friend Reginald Matinanga said.
“He was virtually family and I will cherish those moments and the memories forever,” he said.
This Victoria Falls National Park is located at the western tip of Zimbabwe and is a UNESCO natural heritage site. The waterfalls are often referred to as one of the seven natural wonders of the world, and are referred to by the local Kololo tribe as ‘Mosi-oa-Tunya’ – meaning ‘the smoke that thunders’.
They are 1.7 kilometers wide and up to 100 meters high and are not the highest or widest fall in the world, but many consider them the most spectacular.
ZPWMA manages one of the largest estates in the country, which is about 5 million hectares or 13% of the total land area of Zimbabwe.