Saturday, April 7 (Day 22): A walking safari, and more river exploration.

Today's start was uncharacteristically early for the river camps. Our wake-up call came at about 5:30 with breakfast at 6:00. We had to leave the camp at 6:30, head down the river a few miles to pick up the park ranger at 7:00, then farther down the river to go ashore in the national park for our walking safari.

I was really looking forward to this! We had been on many "game drives" in open vehicles, driving right up into the middle of groups of animals. We had been almost within touching distance of lions, gazelles, cheetahs, and lots more, but we had never been allowed out of the vehicle. Sometimes that was fine! The Land Rovers had always given us a feeling of protection and safety from the inherent dangers of wild animals. Now we would be exposed and very vulnerable. The potential was there for some real adventure, and possibly some real danger.

The ranger was waiting for us at the park information pavilion with a high-powered rifle. We picked him up at just about 7:00 and motored farther down the river, pulling in at a place he indicated. We unloaded from the boat, tied it up, and had a short briefing before starting out.

Tryson informed us that the ranger, with the rifle, would take the lead. In the event of an encounter with a dangerous animal, it was the ranger's job to "deal" with the animal, while Tryson's job was to get the rest of us away from the potential danger. I interpreted that to mean, "If anything happens, stick with Tryson!" OK, I could handle that! I was sure the ranger would only actually shoot the animal as a last resort. We had already been told that the noise of gunshots will usually cause elephants to leave, so the plan seemed reasonable.

 
The park ranger (with rifle) and Tryson lead us off into the Zambian wilds! Right, a good picture of Tryson.
(We didn't have a good one of Tryson, so we downloaded this one from Kiambi's web site.)

Shortly after starting out on our walk, heading directly away from the river, we saw a group of baboons moving across some open grassland between brushy areas, reinforcing our feeling that there WERE wild animals out here, and we WERE vulnerable. We kept walking inland, but angled slightly toward our right. The land was flat with copses of trees and brush, occasional termite mounds, and open areas with sparse grasses growing. As we would round a brushy area I kept expecting to see an elephant, giraffe, gazelle, or something.

A half-hour passed. We walked. No animals! We began to notice birds, and took several pictures of a few that came close enough to capture.

 
Two views of gray-backed fiscal shrikes.

At a few minutes after 8:00 we passed a tree that had obviously had its trunk rubbed smooth over a long period of time. Tryson confirmed that elephants used this as a rubbing post, scratching their shoulders and sides against it. Here's what an elephant scratching post looks like.

 
In the enlargement at right you can see that the bark is rubbed smooth.

Still angling away from the river, we saw ahead that the open land soon stopped and the brush closed in. Between the clumps of brush were some impalas who were well aware of our presence as they alternately stared at us intently, then sprinted off. We kept watching as more and more and MORE kept dashing across open areas between the brush, leaping over obstacles as only impalas can do, and disappearing into more brush. There had to be hundreds of them! Unfortunately they were too far away to get a decent picture of them. I wished for a stronger telephoto lens. There was one spot that they all leaped over, soaring way above the grass and probably covering 20-25 feet in one leap. But, there was no way to capture the beauty of their leaping with a still shot from the long distance, so we just watched.

We kept walking, and kept seeing no animals. By 9:00 we had started back toward the river and our boat. From time to time we would notice small birds that were brilliant red with some black markings. Tryson identified them as Southern red bishops. We would almost get close enough to get a picture of one, then it would fly off. Finally Carol snapped a long shot of one just before it flew away. It gives a rough idea of what they looked like.

The bird was more brilliant red than this distant shot indicates.

Five minutes later, walking across a flat grassy area, we came upon an enormous terrapin! It almost reminded me of the huge Galapagos tortoises we had seen in a zoo. Those creatures grow to be nearly four feet across! Here's the terrapin we saw.

After taking that picture, I realized that there was no size reference in the picture to give an idea of how big that creature was. I put beside it a lens cap from our camera, and snapped the shot below.

Very close to life-size in this shot!

OK, so it wasn't exactly 4 feet across. Or even 4 inches across. As we scanned in these pictures preparing to write this installment of our trip journal, I commented to Carol that we needed to measure that lens cap and put its size in the text so people would be able to judge just how small that terrapin was. I mentioned my guess that it was probably less than 2 inches in diameter, about 1 7/8" or so. Carol dutifully got the lens cap and a ruler, measured carefully, and disgustedly told me that it was exactly 1 7/8 inches across! We had a good laugh over that! The point? This was a VERY small terrapin!

At 9:30 we had been walking for two hours and were nearly back to the river. I got ahead of the group to take a picture of what we looked like, walking through the African wilds.

The wildest animals we saw on our walking safari.

We had seen some huge footprints in dry, hardened mud of hippos and perhaps elephants. We saw the droppings of elephants. Other than the few birds and animals listed above, we saw very little! Our big adventure, the walking safari through the Zambian wilderness, was like a stroll in a city park or around a golf course! So much for adventure and danger! It had been a pleasant two hours, but…

Back at the river bank Tryson and the two camp staff members set up a mid-morning tea for refreshment. We learned one important fact about eating outdoors in this part of Africa; you must have a small table with a tablecloth! I have no idea why, but every time we had a meal or snack served outdoors in Zambia, there was a small table with a tablecloth. I guess "presentation" is important!

Tryson, Linda, Les and John endure the privations of the African wilds.
I mean, come on! A PURPLE table cloth? How gauche!

We later noted the various species of birds we had seen during the walk (I've already listed all of the animals!) They included: abdim stork, gray heron, hadada ibis, Western banded fish eagle, wooly necked stork, Southern red bishop, white-fronted bee eater, fish eagle, paradise whydah, plover, bataleur, and doves. The paradise whydah deserves some description, as it was a very distinctive bird that was easily recognized once we knew what it was. Black, with a relatively small body, perhaps the size of an American songbird like a mockingbird or cardinal, this bird had a disproportionately long tail - perhaps twice as long as its body. In flight, the tail would hang down below the bird like the tail of a kite. The bird's flight was jerky, flapping its wings 4-5 times as it climbed, then descending briefly before repeating the maneuver. All the while its tail hung down behind it. It looked like its tail was much too heavy and it was struggling to carry it along as it flew.

Throughout this journal I have made numerous references to termite mounds. We saw, literally, tens of thousands of these mounds in every country we visited. They were just part of the landscape. Close to our site for morning tea was a very tall mound that gave us a chance to get a picture with a good reference beside the mound to indicate its size - me!

This is NOT a tree trunk. It's an old (mature?) termite mound nearly 15 feet tall.

By shortly after 10:00 we had loaded back into the boat and headed back upriver to drop off the park ranger where we had picked him up. After that brief stop, it was back down river to explore what we could by boat for the rest of the day. During the next few hours we would see an unbelievable number of animals, many of them quite close to the boat. Unfortunately, almost all of them were hippos! And yes, we do have some pictures to prove it.

We didn't just stick to the main channel of the river, but staying on the Zambian side we were able to probe smaller tributary streams as well. Tryson also directed the boat into narrow side channels that looked like they would just meander off inland, but the current was running strongly through them indicating that they had to discharge back into the main river at some point downstream. Some of these went on for miles, never more than a few hundred feet wide and sometimes as narrow as 15-20 feet. I suspect that when the river was at its normal depth, these were simply low areas or perhaps swampy marshes. This was what I had imagined the Zambezi River would look like - fairly narrow with jungle and vines on either side. And almost all of these side streams contained hippos!

Occasionally we came upon hippos out of the water. Usually their first response is to head for deep water, but the one below turned tail and headed directly away from us into the brush. Now THESE are some big East ends going West!