KAFUE:
Claire's River Recce Diary

All roads lead to Kafue. After months of being a sounding board for Steve's Kafue River expedition plans, I very willingly agreed to join him as support on a recce to put eyes on the river the way Google Maps couldn't. The aim was to follow the river as close to the source as possible on a yellow inflatable boat with a motor, some paddles, and some oars. This trip through Zambia was littered with the unpredictable. Being the dry season, what would the water levels be like? What were the populations of crocs and hippos like? How much portaging would be necessary? Steve had contacted many locals and carefully surveyed every map, but there were elements worth finding out beforehand and the recce was to be an adventure in its own right. →

A car filled with gear, past snow on the Drakensberg Mountains in the distance, we set off for Zambia. A man. A woman. A yellow inflatable boat. Steve had followed rivers in the past but, to me, this was a snaking line of water on a laptop screen and a dream - and, God knows, when it comes to building experiences worth talking about, Africa is the keeper of dreams. I had lived wonderful African adventures in the past, but this was a new territory, a new test of grit. Here, the threat would be greater than radioing for help if you broke down in a muddy field. Here, we would be testing our resilience in a setting which was wild, beautiful, and threatening in equal measure - and we would have to rely on each other for the best possible outcome.

The road trip took us along the wildest strip of highway in the world in Botswana - one where, rather than billboards, elephants lined the roads and hornbills flew up in a blur of yellow, white, and black as if in procession as we passed. Life reset on the banks of the Chobe as elephants passed us in huge herds and lilac-breasted rollers rolled in lavender skies. I followed the man who follows rivers over the Zambezi into Zambia and wept in time to the fall of the Smoke that Thunders. The road to Kafue was dotted with famous names - monuments to why we explore - and no amount of fame took from their ability to stir.

We drove into Kafue National Park in the late afternoon, chiaroscuro over golden forests and a window of dirt roads otherwise covered in water for months on end. We chased the sunset to get to Nanzhila Plains on time - along white sandy roads in dimming light - our first introduction to the Moorish haze of the plains we were to experience over the coming days - an African Wuthering Heights where Heathcliff roamed amongst the waterbuck in the setting sun and where a puff of dust in the sunset marked the presence of serval in the distance.

We sat among the leather buckled chests and the smell of the potato bush that night →

spot and a giant croc launched himself from the bank into the water in front of us, I felt the somewhat comic shift that comes when "never in your wildest dreams" suddenly lurks in the water next to you.

The sun was low and setting up camp was a pressing concern we didn't speak out loud. An encounter with a lone hippo in some rapids confirmed it - we needed to get off the water. Eventually, we pulled up on a bank and pulled the boat up a game trail. Our Google mapping told us we were completely alone and so, when we heard the start of an outboard in the distance, our worries suddenly took on a very human form.

"You can't stay here. Come with us." Not knowing what awaited us, we followed a tinny boat through the black and pink swirls of water to the chorus of hippos in the distance to a lodge. Standing, literally hat in hand, covered in mud and wildlife excrement on the banks of a hunting lodge, we begged a place for the night and got more than we ever could have expected. Hospitality in Africa is more than a luxury lodge on a riverbank. It is people who can look sympathetically upon a pair of river rats and listen to their story next to a fire for the night. We ate and drank well that night with the generous hosts at Ntsonga Lodge who, enthused by our fireside tales, led us through the channels - through gorges of rock and benign islands - along the course we'd need to take during the rainy season.

As we followed the river back to Itezhi-Tezhi, where our boat made a wake through the cosmic confusion of the kissing point of waterline and sky, I knew we'd really and truly made first contact with the river - and we'd lived to tell the tale. Back on the lake was back to reality as signs of civilisation started to creep in to the landscape. As we pulled the boat on to the shore, the sunset blazed a wild signature across the skyline. A pair of local kids sailed paper boats on the shore as we deflated the boat - a perfect re-introduction to humanity after the first leg of our river adventure. →

this stretch of river to the chagrin of pods of circumvented hippos like it was commonplace. We walked through bush, brazen in our exploring as we placed our footprints next to the giant paws of predators in the sand. Our last night there, we listened to the sounds of two leopards courting across the islands and, in the early hours, we were woken by the sound of a lion next to the tent - a sound that made me wake to my own shivers before its source was realised.

I've since followed the river to the north of Zambia. I've followed the man who follows rivers and become a river creature on my own. I have seen what happens on a Saturday morning in dusty roadside villages and compared it to the realms of my western experience. I have sat in the kitchens of extraordinary people who have settled in this place and made it home and, for a short time, called it home myself.

I've since returned home and been reminded, through a set of personal circumstances, that the travails of life can test the bounds of courage and spirit. In the blackness of the early hours, the sum of these experiences is always punctuated by the sound of a lion who roars into the darkness and the reminder that the power of our experiences stands to transform everything. And there is nothing more extraordinary than having followed a beautiful African river and exploring the Kafue from the vantage point at the starboard of a yellow boat.