Mighty Zambezi

After a great day at The Falls, we woke up early for our breakfast of cold cereal and tea so we could be picked up by our guides for our rafting/canoe trip down the upper Zambezi River. They picked us up in the game-drive vehicles, with rafts in tow behind, and we were off!

Our head guide, Dominic, gave us a good pre-loading safety talk about crocodiles, hippos and the main danger on the river...the Sun! He also gave a nice overview of the river (where it starts, ends and the course it traverses in between) and some basic canoeing instruction and review.

So with Dominic's words in mind, we loaded into the canoes and had a fantastic morning paddle down the Zambezi. The river is enormous, and quite slow-moving in the stretch we paddled. Not necessarily slow, but it has a lot of water and moves gently. We did get to see (and hear!) hippos and crocodiles, but the guides know the river well enough to keep us far from harm. We also saw many, many birds that were new to most of us - African Fish eagle, reed cormorant, gymnogene, wattled plover, little bee-eater...the list could go on and on. Everyone had a grand time.

Eventually it came time to take out our boats, so we took a picture with our great guides, Potato, Dominic and Peter. (Yes, his name was Potato. Ask one of us sometime about the names in Zambia.)

With our boats unloaded, the crew served us a very nice shore lunch of chicken, meatballs, beans, potato salad and coleslaw.

We sat there on the shores of the Zambezi, eating our meals, and then the students took the time to record their field notes in their log books. Nice work.

After lunch we were off for our game drive, where students started collecting some data (zebra photos, ungulate associations, etc.) but admittedly the highlight was when our guides got in touch with the Zambian Wildlife Authority staff who provide 24/7 armed protection for the Zambian White Rhinos. Because of their work we found the guards who were off in the bush with the rhinos. They also gave us a safety speech, and then took us out into the bush to see the rhinos. We had to walk as quietly as possible, and in single-file line.

After a short walk, we ended up coming to a small herd of FIVE rhinos - this accounts for half of the entire population of rhinos in the entire country. These animals are so endangered (largely from poaching for their horns) that they require round-the-clock armed guards for all 10 rhinos. As you can see we got amazing views of them.

 Indeed we saw lots of other animals on this game-drive, but I think hands-down this was the highlight of the day.