Written by Deborah Wettlaufer

Photos by Mike Calvin

"Hippos on the left!" The words reverberated in the warm, still air over the Zambezi River as a warning from canoe to canoe until they reached us in the back of the line. My heart raced as we prepared to face another gauntlet of angry hippos, trying to maneuver our canoe as close as possible to the river bank to avoid a confrontation with these dangerous and unpredictable animals. As we squeezed by the pod, the dominant bull rose up out of the shallow water and gave a half-hearted charge towards us before submerging again. It was a bluff, but it made us dig in and paddle even faster. Our relief at surviving yet another hippo encounter was short-lived as we spotted a group of massive pinkish-gray forms half-submerged in the water around the bend. Everyone groaned at the prospect of yet more hippos.

The Zambezi is Africa’s fourth longest river and has its origin in the Democratic Republic of Congo before flowing 1,600 miles through Angola, Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique into the Indian Ocean. It makes it most famous appearance at the touristy Victoria Falls, where it is known for its world-class white water rapids. But it is in the middle Zambezi valley below Lake Kariba where most of the canoe trips are run.

Our trip was actually two separate stages, which we took back-to-back. From the floodplains of Chirundu, we traveled for three days through channels and around the many islands in the Zambezi into Mana Pools National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where the blue mountains of the Zambian escarpment loom over alluvial terraces thick with big acacia albida trees. From Mana Pools the second leg of our trip took us through the rugged Chewore Mountains and the dramatic Mupata Gorge, where we saw few signs of people except for a few Zambian fishing villages as we neared Kanyemba where Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique meet. We were the only ones crazy enough to combine both stages for the full seven nights on the river.

This was definitely a no-frills adventure. We carried all our gear, including small two-person tents, sleeping bags, folding tables, canvas chairs, cooking gear, and all our food and water, in twenty-foot Canadian-style canoes. After we had loaded the canoes with camping gear, and baskets of food and wine, our two young, but experienced, river guides Peter and Stephen gathered our group of ten canoeists together for a pre-trip briefing. "Now, let’s talk about the dangers of the river. First, the hippo," said Peter. By the time he had touched on all the perils of the river, including hippos, crocodiles, mosquitoes, and tsetse flies, sun and heat, wind, tree snags and sandbars, a few of us were unsure if we wanted to continue. But we pushed off anyway and glided into the current.

For the first day or so, our biggest headache was reaching an agreement on the best way to paddle and steer the canoe we shared. When you’re in the front of the canoe, facing a rogue hippo, you want to have some control over the direction you take. On the other hand, when you’re steering from the rear of the canoe, you don’t want interference from the paddler up in front. One young couple from Holland on their honeymoon argued so often that the wife decided to paddle with one of the guides for the remainder of the trip.

It wasn’t until the second day, as we entered Mana Pools, that we began to encounter the numerous pods of hippo along the river. The Zambezi River has one of the highest concentrations of hippos in the world, and Mana Pools is so over-crowded with hippos that park officials are considering culling some of them. Hippos are fanatically territorial, and when crowded, tend to become very irritable, as we soon discovered. They appear to be sluggish as they wallow in muddy water. In fact hippos move with alarming speed when provoked and actually kill more people than any other animal in Africa.Only last year a canoeist was killed by a hippo that chomped through his canoe on the same stretch of river.

With instructions from Peter in the lead canoe, we cautiously threaded our way through a perpetual minefield of hippos, never knowing what was lurking beneath the swirling water. We would usually hear them first, grunting, snorting, and puffing their displeasure at our approach. Then we spotted the pairs of small piggy eyes and tiny flapping ears just above the surface of the water, warily watching us. As long as we could see the hippos and give them a wide berth, we felt somewhat safe. It was when crossing open water that we worried the most about a rogue bull suddenly surfacing in front of us. In the middle of one wide expanse of water, a large head suddenly emerged in front of the canoes. As Peter yelled "Back-paddle, back-paddle!", all the canoes proceeded to reverse into each other until there was a massive traffic jam. Luckily, the startled hippo immediately dove under and swam off in the opposite direction, and we could all laugh at our predicament.

To break the tension on their weekly trips, the Goliath guides had given certain notorious hippos names, such as "Mad Max" and "Psychotic Simon". And then of course, there was "Happy Harry", a hippo who minded his own business in a side channel he had claimed by our second camp in Mana Pools. Happy Harry may not have threatened our canoes, but he kept us awake all night with his love-sick groaning and bellowing as he tried to attract a mate.

Navigating through "Hippo City", a long stretch of river packed with hippos, was certainly nerve-wracking, but the worst experience for my husband and me was a narrow channel the guides called "the gauntlet". As our line of canoes passed uncomfortably close to a pod of agitated hippos, the young, impetuous Dutch Honeymooner (the daredevil in our group) suddenly stopped paddling to videotape them only thirty feet away. Like bumper cars, we bounced off the canoe in front of us and in a flash found ourselves facing an enraged charging bull. As Stephen shouted instructions and encouragement, I looked the other way and paddled as though my life depended on it. It wasn’t until we were well downstream that we paused to catch our breath and I realized how frightened I was. Even Stephen shook his head and threatened to retire.

The days passed slowly on the river, punctuated by stops for breakfast, lunch, and a "swim" when we dipped in shallow water running over sandbars to both wash and cool off in the sultry heat. Each evening we stopped to camp on an island or sandy beach early enough to enjoy the vivid red African sunsets. Brilliant stars lit up the moonless night sky, and fireflies flew up and down the river channels beside our camp. Enjoying the multi-course dinners prepared by our guides, and drinking tepid beer and mediocre Zimbabwean wine, we discussed the day’s events, always embellishing our narrow escapes. After retiring for the night, we listened to lion roars and hyena whoops through the thin nylon of our tents. Each morning we were awakened by a chorus of bird calls and rose in time to watch a huge orange sun quickly rise to herald another hot, cloudless day. Life on the river was very simple, and as we adapted to its rhythm and changing moods, time lost its urgency; on the second day, I put my watch away in my pack and never gave it another thought.

The multi-islanded backwaters of the river were teeming with birdlife: goliath herons, egrets, spoonbills, saddlebill and openbilled storks, skimmers, jacanas, kingfishers, hamerkops, bateleur eagles, and daredevil yellowbilled kites. Huge colonies of brightly colored carmine and white-fronted bee-eaters nested in holes in the high banks of the river and darted over the water after insects. The ubiquitous African fish eagle uttered its wild, piercing cry from treetops along the river.

Game in Mana Pools was also abundant due to the dry-season migration of animals to the two-mile-wide river terraces. We passed elephant bulls with big tusks cooling off in the river or gorging themselves on acacia pods; herds of buffalo, eland, waterbuck, and impala grazing on islands; baboons and vervet monkeys in trees along the river; and huge crocodiles with gaping mouths sunning themselves on sandbars. Sadly we saw no black rhino as they’ve been poached almost to extinction in the valley; but two members of our group were lucky enough to surprise two young leopards in a tree while walking near our lunch spot at Acacia Point. As the rest of us rushed over to investigate, we interrupted a hyena taking a mud bath. It was hard to know who was more surprised, us or the hyena.

On our fourth day, at Nyampei Camp in Mana Pools, we said good-bye to Peter, Stephen, and the members of our first group, and met guides Mike and Julius, and the six members of our new group for the second leg of our trip. After barely an hour on the river, a young German couple was welcomed by a lunging hippo that barely missed their canoe, and two Canadians received a fright when a hippo bumped them as it swam beneath their canoe. By then my husband and I were old hands and silently thanked the River God Chimombe that we had escaped again.

We spent the next two days in Mana Pools and the adjacent Sapi Hunting Area, drifting through hippos and big clumps of floating white and purple water hyacinths. When the temperature soared to 110 degrees Fahrenheit, our pace slackened and we took longer lunch breaks, napping under huge acacia and tamarind trees. As we left the open floodplains and entered the wild Chewore Mountains, the silent, ethereal beauty of the scenery more than compensated for the scarcity of wildlife. To our great relief, the number of hippos dwindled and those we encountered were remarkably well-mannered. The wide Zambezi narrowed at the entrance to the Mupata Gorge: twenty-four miles of fast-moving current and whirlpools; towering rock formations; and abundant trees, including mahogany, ebony, sausage, fig, and giant baobabs standing like sentinels on the steep slopes.

We camped in the gorge on a white sandy beach covered with huge lion paw prints. As we sat in the dark, drinking beer and eating potato chips and peanuts, we heard the unmistakable deep, rasping cough of a leopard in the rocks directly above us. After each series of coughs, a frightened bushbuck barked in the distance, but the leopard was more interested in the group of canoeists that had invaded its territory. That night I lay on the warm sand under a canopy of stars that enveloped us as though we were in a cocoon. The rest of the world felt very distant.

In the middle of the night we awoke to a fierce wind blasting our small tent. We had a choice: close the tent flaps and suffocate in the heat, or leave them open and bury ourselves in sand. We closed the flaps but sand still managed to invade the tent and cover everything, including eyes, noses, and mouths. The wind whipped the water in the narrow gorge, creating choppy waves that crashed against our canoes as we struggled through a series of small rapids. After hours of paddling into the wind, we left the gorge behind and stopped to celebrate with a well-earned meal and long siesta.

When we passed the first Zambian village we had seen since our second day on the river, we knew we were nearing the end of our trip. We waved back at children on the banks and men in fishing dugouts as we traveled through the beautiful ironstone Red Cliffs and made our last camp on a sandy spit on the river. That night Julius, wearing his Bob Marley T-shirt, cooked us a six-course dinner, and we drank the last of the Zimbabwean wine.

Sunburned and dirty, covered with mosquito and tsetse fly bites, our bodies aching with exhaustion, we approached Kanyemba with mixed feelings. We all relished the thought of a hot shower and sleeping in a real bed, but we would miss the solitude and simplicity of life on the river and the camaraderie our group had shared. This unique and unspoiled wilderness, not the urban existence that we were returning to, was the real world. The Zambezi, untamed and immensely beautiful, had briefly shown us the magic of Africa.