Has anyone here taken a canoe trip down the Zambezi?

I've discussed this a bit with Myles McCallum and Buzz Charlton. One option is to take a canoe from Mana Pools for a couple of days to Chewore North where I will be hunting, and meet Myles there.

Any thoughts on the matter?

Hmmm, trolling for crocs. Sounds like fun.

Hippos?

quote:

Originally posted by Will:
Hmmm, trolling for crocs. Sounds like fun.

Funny guys.

But seriously, canoeing down the lower Zambezi seems to be a pretty common (and relativly safe) thing to do, and might be fun before the hunt. We went riverboarding in the Victoria Nile in Uganda (which means you're in the water with a little board you hold onto), so a canoe is definatly a step up safetywise with crocs and hippo! I'd presume that Buzz and Myles wouldn't suggest it if it wasn't interesting.

Saw a tv program about a fellow who guides canoes on a river [not sure which one] .He still does it even after being attacked by and loosing an arm to a hippo !! I guess you could say it was interesting !

You see canoes occassionally going down river by Chewore.

A PH I hunted with 3 or 4 years ago, Doug Carlisle, had a teenage girl snagged out of a canoe by Mana Pools a couple years ago.

As long as you accept the risks, have at it.

Erik

I put a reply on at NitroExpress.com to you query there - here .

Some extra comments.

Yes have done it with my wife on our honeymoon no less.

As for hippos and crocs. We were less than 10 metres of a big bastard of a hippo who was giving us the evil eye. Two blackfellas on the bank came for a look to see if two stupid white people were about to be bitten in half. Also a few metres from a full sized crocodile basking on the bank. This is something I would NOT do in Northern Australia but then again African crocs are a bit of "pussies" in comparison.

Also walked in the high grass after buffalo climbing termite mounds to photograph them. No we were not armed at all.

Shared a camp with an insane elephant and grazing hippos and another hunt with a herd of buffalo feeding around us and later a pride of hunting lions.

Enjoyed and survived.



Also white water rafted the Zambezi rapids for the second time. This time taking many mouthfuls of Zambezi water.

Eric- do it. I took my wife from Mana to Kanyemba for honeymoon. Also I used to take the form 3 kids (15 year olds) from Peterhouse colledge down the river for a week or so every easter holidays. 20 kids 4 teachers and two guides. Had some hippo trouble but that was alway due to the fact we had 10 to 12 canoes. Parks regs limmit paying clients to 6 canoes and if there are 5 or less we have never had a hippo problem.

A fantastic holliday.

Sugest natureways as the company to book with but otherwise Jim Levenderos or Streach are the only companies still operating on our side of the river.

I did that trip about 10-12 years ago - Mana Pools to whatever the last destination is before the Mozambique border. Remains a highlight of my (modest) travelling life. There is just a ton of stuff to see along the way - birds en masse, we spent one breakfast watching a pride of lions defending their buffalo kill against the bull trying to drive the lions off, and a whole bunch of vultures that swooped down whenever the lions got too busy with the bull.

We even went swimming in the Zambezi, in a shallow place where our guide said there were no crocs. Must have been true, none of us were eaten alive. At times we had to dodge (ROW!!!) hippos - we had some hippos fighting or at least pusuing each other under water. Never a dull moment.

The prettiest part of the river I saw, was in the last section before you get down towards Mozambique. The river runs in a gorge here (forget the name), and there is just a ton of wildlife to look at. Absolutely magnificent.

- mike

Erik,

I've been on the stretch of the Zambesi between Mana Pools and Luangwa a couple of times but not in a canoe. The wildlife there is really amazing particularly in the Mpata Gorge. It should be a terrific adventure.

Regards,

Mark

Mho - how did your case of bilharzia go? I grew up in Rhodesia back in the 60's - we stayed out of rivers except up in Vumba or Inyanga due to the risk of getting bilharzia (Schistosomiasis) from contact with the water. I guess from the rest of your adventure that bilharzia was the least of the risk.

Should be an exciting trip. I hunted out of Chete a few years back, and some days we used a fishing boat with an outboard to travel up and down the Zambezi, then get out and hunt. Once when we traveled around the bend of the river, a large croc, looked to be about 18 feet jumped into the river and came right at us, pushing a wake of water in front of it that looked like a dome of water about two feet high and about four feet long, plunged under the boat and banged it as it went under - sure got my attention. Hippos surfaced all around us blowing water and grunting. Once we went down a side branch of the Zambezi and found ourself surrounded with the most crocs I have ever seen in one place - must have been two dozen or more. We saw poachers rafts and their camps where they had been stringing nets across the river. The PH pulled up the the rafts and cut the vines that held them together to get rid of them. We saw lots of game along the banks and elephants every day.

quote:

Originally posted by Corax:
Mho - how did your case of bilharzia go? I grew up in Rhodesia back in the 60's - we stayed out of rivers except up in Vumba or Inyanga due to the risk of getting bilharzia (Schistosomiasis) from contact with the water. I guess from the rest of your adventure that bilharzia was the least of the risk.

Probably a sensible precaution - and one which I observed while hunting later by Lake Kariba on the same trip. I'm not sure if I or anybody else on the trip got bilharzia (under the toe nails, or something?) from our swim in the Zambezi, but I picked up all sorts of other interesting stuff on that trip to Africa. I did not pay attention to the correct way of using anti-malarial medicine, and stopped taking it shortly after leaving the Low Feld of SA. Result: probably a mild case of Malaria just before and during our first days down the Zambezi. Maybe in my fever induced stupor, the idea of bilharzia did not register when the guide suggested a swim... In any event, the crocs and the hippos seemed the more immediate danger.
- mike