Zambezi River
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Real Hippos
Don't Wear Tutus
or
If You Can Hear the Hippos Laughing, You Must be in
Africa
Last August, in
the dead of winter there, I went to Zimbabwe to see the mighty Zambezi river,
which is on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia. I had a mission, the main reason
was to raft the Zambezi, the first day of this trip is known as the biggest one
day whitewater run on the planet. But I decided to see as much as the river as
I could, to really get to see the wildlife of Africa.
The first part of the river odyssey was to canoe for 5 days on the
Zambezi in an area called Mana Pools. This is part of a national park and is
below Lake Kariba which is the largest man made lake in the world. We flew into
the area and landed on a dirt airstrip in the bush. As we drove to the put in,
we saw zebras, waterbuffalo, impala, baboons, I was going wild, they are just
walking around everywhere. We used 4 large touring canoes, for the group of 8
and a guide.
We began
paddling and there are hippos everywhere, they come up from the river bottom,
snort, wiggle their ears and then watch us. We then see an old bull elephant
near the shore and were told this is very rare. But we can actually paddle
close to him. I was a little freaked by the hippos because they are everywhere,
on both sides of us and I can't tell where they are. Hippos are considered the
most dangerous animal in the bush, they will attack and fight to the death. We
were still on the water when the sunset, which was spectacular, but I'm
thinking its getting dark, I'm surrounded by hippos in Africa. And now the
hippos are popping up all over the place. I decided I wanted to stay near our
guide, with the big gun!
When we reached
camp, the tents were set up, the chairs were placed around the fire and we had
cocktails as we overlooked the great Zambezi. This was followed by a candlelit
dinner served by a staff of 6. Life in Africa is not bad at all! This was the
evening program each night.
Well, my first night sleeping, if you can call it that, in the bush
was an experience. Although we were in tents, there was no shortage of activity
going on around me. At one point, the earth was shaking, I was too afraid to
open my eyes, 'cause what was I going to do when I saw whatever it was that was
causing this! I found out the next day it was hippos walking by my tent! Then I
heard the banging of horns, I have no idea what animals were fighting. Besides
all this you hear the roaring of the lions across the river in Zambia,
elephants trumpeting and the hippos laughing, well that is what it sounded like
to me.
The typical
daily routine was to get up pre-dawn, have tea and at first light, get paddling
for a couple hours then stop for breakfast and have a 2 hour hike. In the
afternoon, as we are paddling, we find a 12 ft. crocodile on the shore with its
mouth open, as we paddle over to it and I was getting my camera ready, it turns
and I am looking into these yellow eyeballs and he jumps into the water heading
for my boat, we paddled hard, it was perpendicular to my boat! Pretty high on
the adventure scale.
Some of the
other high points were: lunch on a sandbar in the middle of the river with
elephants on one side and hippos and waterbuffalo on the other; walking through
the bush seeing more elephants, impala, zebra, waterbok. One night at dinner,
while we were having soup, 7 lions walked into camp, I got a little concerned,
asked what we should do, I was then told we walk over to them and get a better
look. And so we did, at night they are in their element and really don't care
about a group of humans, I couldn't believe it. There is nothing more amazing
than sitting next to the river at sunset and watching the elephants, mothers
and babies, coming down to the river to drink as the sky is an orangey-red when
the sun goes behind the mountains of Zambia.
The final
adventure high point on this trip was the last day, our guide stops us on a
sandbar and explains that the hippos are on both sides on the river and not
sure how we are going to be able to get by them. I was at this point kinda
hippo-hyper anyway. He surveys the situation for about 20 minutes, then
announces we will hug the shore (this is a river that is miles wide), with one
paddle on the shore and one in the water. If he yelled jump, we were to jump on
the land and back away slowly. Now I was totally freaked! Well, we made it
through with no incidents. I think the next time I see a hippo, one with a tutu
would be nice.
I would
recommend this trip to anyone, you need no paddling experience. There are not
many opportunities to get this close to animals by water and by foot in the
bush. The camping is semi-permanent tent camps with cots, sheets and blankets
and full staff for cooking. The only thing you have to do is paddle, walk, take
pictures and soak up the experience.
Zambezi River
PART II - RAFTING
GET DOWN, HANG ON,
AND ENJOY THE RIDE
I went back to
Victoria Falls to connect with the rafting part of my river odyssey. This is a
9 day trip/7 days on the river, run by Mountain Travel Sobek which had done the
first descent of this river in 1981, in conjunction with Shearwater, the local
Zimbabwe company.
I had seen the videos in the States and then in the shops in Victoria
Falls. They showed huge whitewater and plenty of people swimming and boats
flipping. This is a class IV-V river. I have already done some big water like,
the Bio-Bio in Chile, but this is the biggest in the world.
We had one American guide, who I had met on the Chile trip, one
English guide and 3 Zims and a video man, the group was 8 Americans. On the
first day, we began below Victoria Falls on the Zambia side. We hike down to
the river which takes about 45 minutes. We had 2 boats, one oar, one paddle,
plus 2 kayakers for this day with no gear, the gear would meet us at the end of
the day. We got into our boats at the base of Victoria Falls, one of the seven
wonders of the world, and practiced a Zambezi ritual called highsiding. This
involves throwing yourself over the sides or front of the raft as directed by
the guide in order to keep the boat right side up. When the guides felt we have
mastered this skill be began the run.
There are 18 major rapids on the first day. Most people just do the
first day, which can be run almost every day, not many do the multi-day like I
did. When we put on there were 14 other rafts with 8 people per raft ahead of
us. No one is quite sure what the volume of this river is, it is estimated at
120,000 cfs, for a translation, that is four times the normal volume of the
Grand Canyon.
The first few rapids are giant wave trains and 3 of us in the front
were working hard, highsiding over the bow. We get to rapid #5, this is the
biggest drop I have ever seen, it was about 20ft down, a giant wall of water,
we kept going down, down, I looked back to see a green glass waterfall that we
had just come down. We saw holes big enough to park buses in. The next big ones
were #7 and #11, I had heard about these, they're famous. It was one giant day
of giant water.
At lunch, we
saw the 14 other boats, one of them had flipped as we watched. Our group was
very quiet at lunch, I think most of us were thinking what the hell are we
doing here, if it was going to be a week like this we were going to be dead.
After lunch, we did our first portage of the trip which is carrying the boat
around a rapid that is unrunable. There are 2 other portages on this trip which
are major since we have all our gear and are very difficult. We continued on
down the river. At one point we surfed a little, it felt like the raft stopped
dead and bent in half. By the time we got to camp everyone was exhausted, not
many were awake past 9pm.
The excitement for the next day was at lunch, as we were pulling into
shore, one tube blew and then the other side. This was a first, 2 flat tires at
one time! So lunch became a long stop to repair the raft, we were like lizards
on the rocks with no shade. This was a short day of rafting, only 4 major
rapids.
As for camping, most nights were sand beaches. We used no tents or
mosquito nets which I found amazing. Once in camp, it was hot until the set but
we were not allowed to go in the water because of the crocs! There were no
hikes once in camp, I thought because of animals. I found out later, it was
because the hills still have landmines from previous wars. Since it was winter
there, the days were 80's and the nights were about 50 which was great. The
major rapids diminish after the first couple days, there a few notable ones for
the next few days. By the last 2 days the water gets flat and then we started
to see the crocs and on the last day hippos. The last few days the kayakers had
to get into the rafts and put the kayaks on the rafts since the crocs began to
chase them!
The other hard
part of this trip is the portages. There were 2 major portages but not on the
same day, thankgod. On day 4, we had to unrig the boats and carry everything
across the rocks, it takes about 2 hours to go 100 yards. On day 5, the portage
takes 3 hours to go a couple hundred feet. This whole production was
interesting, the rafts had to be lowered by rope over a cliff and then rigged
again. At this point I had my personal Zambezi adventure, as we were getting
back into the boats after the portage, we had to get into the boats from a
cliff. There was a lot of current going on and my legs are not quite long
enough so I proceeded to step on to the tube and then slid right in the river.
The guide trying to help me in fell in with me. At least with current and sheer
walls, I didn't have to worry about crocs! We are all laughing and our video
man had gone ahead so there was no video of this. There was one other rapid
Deep Throat, we had to walk around and the boats were sent through the rapid
fully loaded but no people, one raft flipped then.
We had the opportunity to visit a fishing village along the river for
which we had brought items to trade. We got some wood carvings and to see how
locals live. Overall, the water was as big as I had heard, the portages were a
pain, and the local crew were amazing since they spend over 300 days a year on
the river! Because of the big volume of water everything seems to happen in
slow motion compared to other rivers. I would recommend doing the one day and
if you don't get enough do the one day again!
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