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Published: September 10th 2006
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Chickwenya Safari Camp
This camp was right on the banks of the Zambezi River It was now time to move on to our next safari camp, located north in an area called Mana Pools and right on the banks of the Zambezi River. One of the first things I noticed while in the air, were the many Baobab trees. Most of us know these trees from the Disney movie “The Lion King”. It’s the huge tree that doesn’t blend in with the landscape and doesn’t have any leaves on it. It looks dead most of the time. If I had to describe them I would say they remind me of about 4 large dead redwoods stuck together. They are absolutely huge and dwarf the surrounding landscape. The one you see in this picture would take about 20 people to surround it. They are very dramatic.
This camp was completely different from the first; being on the river it was a wetter area so we saw a lot more species of birds than before. It was a larger safari camp with 20 tents which were up on platforms off the ground, so we had wooden flooring and outside decks. This place provided much more in the way of nighttime animal noises. Our first night there,
we had hyenas fighting outside a tent just down from ours and the second night some elephants were feeding on the trees next to us. When elephants feed (which is all the time) it sounds like a bulldozer coming through. It was night and pitch black with no moon so we couldn’t see a thing, but it sounded like the earth was opening up and the trees next to us (I could reach out and touch them from our deck) were shaking like crazy and being split in two.
We shared this camp with more guests, about 16 in total. One of the more interesting couples we got to know, was a couple from Paris on their honeymoon (seems the Parisians are everywhere). He was a consultant for something. It seems like whenever someone says they’re a consultant that’s about all the information you can get out of them. Maybe when someone says they’re a consultant it really means they’re a secret agent or mercenary. Now, the exciting part is his wife; she works at one of the most famous art museums in the world, the Louvre; home to the Mona Lisa and Last Supper. She is in charge of arranging special exhibits to be shown in other museums around the world. We made sure to get their email, so that we could look them up when we are in Paris, next spring. Along with more guests, we had more choices on how to spend our time. At the first camp there was only the choice of game drives or sitting in an animal blind. At Chikwenya we could go on guided nature walks into the bush, game drives, fishing, sunset boat rides or canoeing on the river.
Our highlight of Mana Pools was our canoe trip on the Zambezi River. It was just an afternoon paddle, entering the river near our camp and paddling downstream for about 4 hours. Mike and I shared one canoe, while our guide, Kendall, in the other. A canoe has no engine noise so we were able to get much closer to the game than when we took the sunset boat ride. The canoe ride started out slowly with us paddling along, staying very close to the banks and close to Kendall (he had the gun). This vantage point allowed us to see beautiful canary type birds who nested by digging holes in the tall part of the riverbanks. They looked like small colorful parrots. The area of the Zambezi we were in is known for its huge population of hippos and crocodiles, and we saw our share. I started wondering if we were staying close to the bank to give us a chance to jump ship and run for it. There were hippos everywhere and we could see up to 60 or so at one time. Usually, they would duck down under the water as we passed just 50 to 100 feet away or so….I said usually. Not all were so accommodating to give way to us. The hippos were most often in small family groups but we also encountered lone males who were more territorial. A couple of them were staking out their territory right in our path and we had to paddle out into the river to get around them. We did this a couple of times with no ‘close encounters’ but then our luck ran out.
We were in a very populated area of the river and one big guy just wouldn’t move. We waved our paddles in the air, smacked the side of our canoes making noise but nothing worked. So out into the river we went. We had just made our turn to head back to the bank when all of a sudden it seems we got very popular. Hippos started popping up all around us and we were boxed in by about 4 of them. Hippos are very big (by the way, they look even bigger when you’re in a canoe in the water at their level) and it’s very easy for them to tip over your canoe. They we still about 60 feet away so it wasn’t time to hit the panic button yet, but the yellow caution light was definitely blinking inside of my head. We just hoped they would submerge and leave us alone, but that didn’t happen……They started coming closer so we picked what looked like the best route through them and started paddling fast. Time to go!!!!!
We found ourselves half way thru the group when one surfaced right behind us. Mike was in rear of the canoe and got a much closer experience than I did; I could tell this by the way he yelled at me to paddle even faster……no problem Mike. Whew, just a bit of excitement there. The crocodiles we saw also saw us. We spotted 2 (that we know of). As soon as they saw or heard us they would slide into the river and disappear. This was truly an experience we would never forget.
Our last night in Africa was just as special as was the whole trip. The camp staff had been hinting during the day, that tonight’s dinner would be a special one. That night we drove to the massive Baobab tree near our camp. When we arrived, it was already dark and we could see that they had strung twinkling lights all around this giant tree and set up a formal dinner. Tables, candlelight, linen tablecloths, bar, chaffing dishes on the buffet table, everything you can think of in a fancy restaurant except it was in the middle of the African bush, under this 500 year-old Baobab tree. The menu included leg of lamb, roasted rosemary potatoes, lots of wine and some kind of peach dessert. It was a crystal clear night and the stars in the night sky were tremendous. The Milky Way in the southern sky is so close and bright you feel like you could reach out and collect about a dozen stars in your hand.
We had several new arrivals to camp that day, some Americans (always) and Europeans. The real treat was an older Swedish couple who sat across from us. Her name was Kristina! (A beautiful Swedish name) During conversation many people were asking us what we (Mike & I) did for a living and we didn’t want to tell the truth. The American involvement in Iraq is not a popular topic outside of the US so we were vague and just said we worked for an energy company in Dubai. When the questioning got around to the Swedish couple we were very surprised to learn she was the Swedish Ambassador to Zimbabwe! Who would have known? The many different people we met on this trip were amazing, and so was our last night in Africa. The End.
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