Usually I don't end up doing anything 'touristy' on my visits to Zim, but I've been intrigued by the canoe safaris offered on the Zambezi ever since Robbie (my Muzuva bandmate) did one during our 1994 trip. This was a three night trip called Tamarind, led by our guide Cloud and guide-in-training Takesure, and consisting of myself, 3 Norwegians, and an Australian family. We put in at the Chegundu border post after a three hour drive from Kariba.
It was fairly leisurely paddling, with a current running at 6-7 km/hr to help us along.
The big (literally) thing to watch out for were hippos; they can weigh up to two tons, and seem to be habitually crabby. They generally hang out in family herds of 4-12 animals, claiming one area of the river. As they often sleep on the bottom (their specific gravity means they can't float) and come up for air without waking, the lead canoe must knock a paddle on the canoe every so often to alert them that we're coming, so that they don't come up underneath the canoes. Then they watch you from the shallows, with just ears, eyes, and nostrils visible. (sorry, my ipod isn't really cut out for wildlife shots.)
Did I mention they were big? Hippo track by our first campsite.
Weaverbird colony.
Storm moving in from the Zambian side of the river.
Second night's camp. A huge wind came up that night and our tents started to migrate down the sandbar...
Hippo avoidance: single file along the bank. The idea is to not get between the hippo and it's escape route to deep water. Because they generally only feed on land at night, during the day we weren't worried about them piling down on top of us from the bank - but Cloud did tell us of a friend who had a juvenile elephant mock-charge them, then lose control at the bank edge and come crashing down into the centre of the canoe, smashing it in two. Everyone survived... but I was just as happy that the elephants we saw were at a distance.
Sunrise on the river, last morning.
We pulled out at Mana Pools National Park; this is a hippo skull on display at the park office.
And an elephant femur...
After a buttock-deflating 5 hour drive back to Kariba in the back of a Land Rover, I unpacked at our backpacker's lodge and then went for a walk up the driveway, hoping to see an elephant we'd spotted on the way in. Unfortunately it spotted me first.... and charged. This taken from behind the biggest tree I could find.
I thought it would be content with scaring me off, but it kept coming, although I slowed it up by deking through the small trees.
At the lodge, it decided to take out it's frustrations on the garbage bins...
And then, satisfied, left. Ian, the lodge manager says there are regulars who visit 2-3 times a week, more in the dry season, and they tend to be grumpy. Grumpy elephants, crabby hippos... I have new appreciation for the quiet Zongororos that inhabit Kufunda.
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