September 2009 Archives

The riverside location of Sanctuary's Zambezi Kulefu camp means its guests can enjoy extra water-based activities alongside their game drives. We headed upstream past elephants and hippos to have a go at canoeing back down one of the smaller side streams.

As we moor up we notice a croc slipping into the water. After swallowing our fears and assembling our kit we climb aboard. Chilala and Carole each share a canoe with a guide, and Olivia and I volunteer to go it alone in our canoe.The rains in Zambia are only a month away, so the river is very low and the navigable channels are narrow. Olivia and I run aground and crash into the bank, but slowly we begin to get the hang of it. We drift past buffalo and bird life until we near camp, where there's a safari vehicle waiting with gin and tonics. We sip our sundowners and watch the view.

As a vegetarian, fishing has never been very high up my list of pursuits to try. However, it seemed churlish not to have a go at catching - and releasing - one of the famous tiger fish in the Zambezi river while at Kulefu.
 
Our guide Elijah - a man of infinite patience - helped we four very amateur fishermen bait our hooks and cast our lines and there we sat as the sun rose over Zambia.
Call it beginners luck, but barely a minute later I felt an almighty tug on my line. "You have a bite!" cried Elijah. In all the excitement I tried to remember to pull the rod sharply to jam the hook into the fish's mouth before winding it in. The fish was leaping out of the roiling water, the rod was bent double like a question mark and I thought my arm was going to break, but eventually I managed - with a lot of help from Elijah - to get the fish into the boat. So here I am with my first catch - a 9lb Tiger Fish.

We removed the hook from his mouth and threw him back, and off he swam. The rest of the morning passed in companionable contemplation, punctuated by bursts of excitement when Olivia landed another nine pounder, Chilala brought in a 5lb fish and Carole hooked two such massive beasts that they both managed to snap her line with their vast strength and get away. The rest of the time we would cry, "I think I've got a bite!" and Elijah would have to explain that no, yet again we had merely managed to catch the bed of the river, or hook ourselves to the bottom of the boat.

After 26 hours or so we finally arrive at our destination. It's not been the shortest journey to Zambia - a Kenyan Airways flight from Heathrow to Nairobi, then another flight to Lusaka, Zambia's capital, via Harare in Zimbabwe, where we sit on the ground for an hour. In Lusaka, we board a 12-seater prop plane to fly to the Lower Zambezi National Park.

As we fly over the park we spot herds of elephant, basking hippos and the telltale curves of crocodile far below.

We land at Kulefu's tiny airstrip and walk down to the banks of the Zambezi where we board a boat.

After a 15 minute ride along the river, zipping by families of hippo and with pampas grass waving on either side like welcoming bunting, we spot our new home, Sanctuary Retreat's Zambezi Kulefu camp.

After checking out our rooms, Carole from African Pride, Olivia from Kuoni, Chilala from the Zambian Tourist Office in the UK and I all congregate in the communal lounge area for a refreshing drink, and spot elephants on the opposite bank, taking their evening drink too. It more than makes up for the tiring journey.