After breakfast on Monday morning, we all hopped into “the beast” for a hour+ drive through the Zambezi NP to our put in location on the river for the kayaks. We saw zebra along the way, and we quickly realized that long game drives on bumpy roads may not be our preferred mode of transportation for future safaris.
Diego gifted all of us our Nyami Nyami pendant necklaces now that we were about to start the river portion of the trip. And, Hippo explained the African mythology of the symbol. For our purposes, Nyami Nyami is the River God and wearing the pendant would help protect us on the river in the days ahead.
Once we arrived at the put in, we received our safety briefing from the local guides. We were instructed to “follow the yellow box” (the lead kayaker) and to stay close together. Given that we would generally be in flatwater on this section of the Upper Zambezi River, we had to be more aware of crocs and hippos in the water. We were reminded that crocs are opportunistic hunters, so we should avoid dragging our hand in the water. This is Africa!
Kurt and I were one of the few couples it seemed who opted for a tandem kayak together (instead of separating to go with a guide). We kayaked about 4.75 miles to a beach where we stopped for lunch, navigating through several Class 1 & 2 rapids and arguing with each other the whole way. “Why can’t you paddle straight?” “What are you doing back there?” Sigh, the “divorce barge” lived up to its name with us…again.
The lead kayaker was constantly scanning the water ahead for obstacles that we needed to navigate, such as rapids…and hippos. When he spotted something, we had to pause, regroup, and wait for the plan on how to proceed.
Toward the end of our 10k kayak journey, we encountered a scary situation. As we were looking at a herd of elephants on the right riverbank (just below our camp, unbeknownst to us at the time), I heard Monica on my left side say, “Hippo 11 o’clock.” Sure enough, there was a hippo in the water not far from us. He charged toward our group, and we quickly paddled to shore. After assessing the situation, the guides instructed us to drag our kayak along the shore around some trees to a spot where we could get back in and paddle away from the area.
Once we got back in our boat, we had to lean down to go under a large tree branch. When we emerged, I realized that we were headed straight toward the hippo (Kurt assures me that he was still holding onto the tree branch overhead though). Diego was strongly telling us to back up, back up, but steering isn’t our strong suit. If I continued to put my paddle in the water, we were quickly going to meet the hippo head on. Thankfully, Diego shifted to giving us the command to back paddle on the right only. Ah, now this I understand. This helped us to reorient our position and paddle away from the hippo, and we soon found ourselves back at camp. Get me out of here!
I had no idea that we were so close to camp at this point. Once I was back on higher ground, I walked over to the tents at the end of our campsite to see the hippo from a safer position. Apparently, he is known to the local guides to be in this area. “Billy” is a lone young bull who was likely kicked out of his pod after he was bitten in a skirmish. So, now he’s here to terrorize us!
You mean we have another day of this ahead tomorrow?!