On The Adventure Trail There are a number of excursions that can put you in touch with the very core of nature and arouse your bush senses beyond the norm, but being able to walk in a true wilderness area, canoe a river as mighty as the Zambezi river and staying in a tented camp brings me to the very essence of the bush that draws anyone who is passionate and crazy about being out there. We set off in a light aircraft to Matusadona and landed at Kiplings bush airstrip where we were picked up and transferred to the Maronga River mouth in the Ume River basin. It was here where our crew had set up camp on the shoreline of Lake Kariba. That afternoon we had all been travelling the whole day and so decided to enjoy the fresh air of the Lake on our boat cruising the hippo trodden shorelines of the lake. I distinctly remember falling asleep to the far cry of a hyena’s whooping, a familiar call of the wild that pierces above most night sounds. The next morning we were walking through a fossilized forest as the sun came over the Matusadona Mountain range, that forms part of the Zambezi Escarpment. We used the clear elephant trails that had been so carefully chosen by the gentle giants and well worn from many visits to the lakeshore, and undoubtedly used by various other animals. One of the users of the trail was a black rhino. Seeing fresh tracks of rhino always sends my pulse racing, merely from the prospects of walking into one. We soon arrived on the river bed of the Maronga about three miles from it’s mouth and followed the flow of the water upstream. We felt like explorers walking in untamed wilderness as this was far off the beaten track of any visitor or tourists. You have to be prepared to hike through some dry and rugged countryside to get to this point. On the narrow stream where the water flowed, we came across so many interesting little things, beautiful ferns and other wild flowers such as the beautiful flame lily, tracks of a big male leopard, lion and even the rare cape clawless otter. The otter had scats all over the rocks; we stopped to examine the tiny fish bones that had been through its stomach. We could see the fish swimming in the beautiful crystal clear water which was about knee deep. The sight of huge trees overhanging the river with trumpeter hornbills and brown-hooded kingfishers looking on and chirping madly, made us feel as though we had discovered an oasis. We walked upstream in anticipation of finding the spring. Halfway up the stream, we came across the most fascinating rock formations of conglomerate and limestone rocks. The limestone rocks were the larger of the rocks, which when you examined closely, you could see fossilised bark and leaves with the details of the vein structures and cerated edges. The other being the intricate bone structure of small fish that had fossilised into the rock. Talk about pre-historic times, this river was full of it, and if every rock could speak, you would need a whole lifetime to sit and listen to the stories. We forged on until we got to a beautiful waterfall that stood about 7 feet, flowing down the steep face of the limestone rock and creating small stalagmites and some of the roots from the nearby trees where coated with limestone which has hardened causing the roots to look like concrete pillars. We climbed up to the source of the spring; it was seeping out gently out of the side of the mountain. We drank the spring water and filled up our water bottles and spent some time admiring in awe of this natural phenomenon. After freshening up we continued to walk back to our camp. On that walk, we came across kudu, impala, klipspringer, baboon, elephant and some huge crocodiles that were basking on the shores of the rivers. We again ended off the day with a cruise on the lake after some tiger fishing in one of the deep lagoons. Our price was seeing a black rhino come down to the water’s edge and drink right in front of our boat. It was a picture that remained with me for the rest of the safari. Usually one has to walk and sweat for hours tracking them and sometimes when you find them you only see them for a brief moment before they flee from you. This time the prehistoric beast stood there, watching us for a little longer than just a while. Another highlight in Matusadona was walking into three big elephant tuskers. We were following some rhino trails when we heard the breaking of big branches. It was a number of elephant bulls but three in particular stood out. We snuck up-close to them until we could hear them breath as they shredded the surrounding bushes. I could feel the breeze on my face all along and I knew we were downwind of them and with their poor eyesight; we were well within safety zone. Later that morning after our walk we found them again mud bathing by the lakeside. This allowed us again to get closer and take more photographs of the elegant creatures, but this time it was only the majestic three. From Matusadona, we flew across the lake to Kariba town where we started our three days and two nights of canoeing the Zambezi River. Our first day was through the Gorge. It was the most peaceful part of this trip, serene landscapes of three hundred to four hundred feet of steep gorge with predominantly granite rock. The gorge has a number of little streams and rivers that flow into the river, some creating the most scenic waterfalls during the summer months. For both nights we camped on Islands in a very simple style camping. Again we felt we couldn’t get any closer than that to being in the wild. The night sky was amazing without any light pollution from civilization; we were truly in the thick of the bush. We canoed the river up to Chirundu and rode in a safari vehicle to Mana Pools for our last segment of our safari. This is what I had been looking forward to mostly, the game rich flood plains of Mana Pools combined with the ambience of the Zambezi. The first afternoon we were out walking and came across a herd of buffalo, a couple of big lone elephant bulls, warthogs, a herd of eland, waterbuck, zebra and loads of impala. We thought it was not bad for our first afternoon. As we walked through Mana all the way to the eastern border of the park in the three days we were there, we saw countless number of herds of eland, elephant breeding herds and various other kinds of wildlife including hippo in and out of the water. The highlight being lost in the cloud of dust of a herd of about two hundred buffalo that we had tracked and found. Our last evening we managed to catch a number of fresh-water bream fish as the sun turned the horizon to a golden orb. That night we had bream. Written by Professional Guide, Beks Ndlovu – August 2003