Solitude, quiet and wilderness – a bird-watching trip down the Zambezi River

I was on a mission. 

I was late for a meeting with a client in Victoria Falls, a visit that inadvertently involved bumping into a friend from the Philippines – who didn’t know that he needed a second wedding ring – and a jet boat over the rapids to a lodge on an island. Which might have had something to do with a search for a bird known as Schalow’s turaco.  

To the disinterested, Schalow’s turaco looks much the same to the avifaunal-misinformed as the Knysna or Purple-crested turaco, a nevertheless beautiful creature with a distinctive call. 

To birding enthusiasts however, this creature is a “special” – as the bird location map below shows.

Birdlife on Chundu Island beach (Photo: Angus Begg)

I was on Chundu Island as part of a mission to design a safari highlighting some of the more exquisite parts of Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland North province – a region that includes Victoria Falls and Hwange National Park – and the only part of the country that most people think of visiting.  

If we take the final safari as a book, then the bits leading up to its final compilation make up the chapters. And the first one started at speed. 

“You have to approach Chundu by jet boat”, said Jann Kingsley, co-owner Chundu Island lodge, fully aware that I have experienced many aspects of Victoria Falls over the years. So much for said experience, however, because I had never heard of the boat. 

Upriver sprint

An aerial photograph of Chundu Island and the sundowner ferryboat on the Zambezi River (Photo: Angus Begg)

Conrad Ncube, one of Chundu Island's two boat pilots, ferrying us to the mainland for our morning walk in in Zambezi National Park. Leopard spoor and warthog and baboon skulls were on the menu. (Photo: Angus Begg)

35 minutes later, departing from a short way from where the Zambezi plunges over the Victoria Falls, I knew a little more about it. 

I knew it was an upriver sprint requiring the skill of the Mushamboza family of pilots, in this case represented by Arnold Mushamboza, a jet boat pilot, who had been taught the ways of the river by his father. 

Apart from a great white-water expedition rafting rapids with names like Tumble Dryer and Washing Machine about 20 years ago (which involved the requisite periods travelling upside down, i.e. under water), my experience of the river ever since has been pretty much of the large, lazy and languid type. 

Even elephants crossing the river is a slow, almost graceful experience.

Jet boat pilots Arnold Mushamboza, pictured, and his father are among a select few with intimate knowledge of riding the rapids above the Victoria Falls. It is another way of getting to your chosen Zambezi island or riverbank accommodation. (Photo: Angus Begg)

But this ride with Arnold was a little bit thrilling. 

It’s obviously all relative, but even if you have much experience of this deceptively fast-moving river, cornering the rapids with Arnold – a beaming grin wrapped around his face beneath the sunglasses – gives a taste of what it feels like to be in his mind, behind the big smile. 

Taught how to navigate the river’s tricky rapids by his father – he says they’ve broken many propellers – they are the team that delivers guests to the various camps upriver. 

Ramping over rapids like salmon swimming upstream, we turn in broad arcs as we gracefully broadside from one country’s riverbank to the next.

Contemporary designer lodges and safari camps flash past on both sides of the river, Zimbabwe to the south, Zambia to the north, and the odd island in between.

Hippos wink, crocodiles slip off their spits of sand, and a squadron of African skimmers swoop past, with a bank of cumulonimbus clouds building behind as the sun starts to nod off. It is indescribably beautiful.

Africa’s appeal

For travellers who often emerge from a land where clouds and wet grey skies push blue-sky sunshine to the edge of the frame, Africa’s appeal is all too clear. It spoke to me when I hopped off the boat at Chundu Island, about a kilometre in length and 400m wide, with Zambia on the northern bank behind and Zimbabwe in front to the south.

Dardley Tafuruka is the Chundu Island concession manager. (Photo: Angus Begg)

Dardley Tafuruka, the concession manager at Chundu Island lodge, has a big presence and a large voice. With a sweep of his hand, after waving goodbye to Arnold and his sidekick, he declares the island to be mine. 

“At least for the next two days, all our guests checked out this morning.” 

Read more: Karoo Keepsakes – Bull Dancing, Line Dancing, Sea Cowboys, Coldstream Guards & the Magic of a Shearing Shed

So the long pool was mine. I could even do my ashtanga yoga routines on the island’s beach, right in front of the lodge deck – a highlight not found on similar island lodges. 

The same beach where pelicans, skimmers, storks and knob-billed ducks line up for absurdly long sunning sessions in the morning, and where I saw a bushbuck dance the slowest, most curious tango around a long, corpse-like crocodile. 

The Cambridge Dictionary defines birding as “the hobby of watching wild birds in their natural environment”. Stretching that a little laterally to the wingtips, a “special” means the bird is either endemic to the area, is rarely seen or is hard to see. Schalow’s turaco is that bird in these parts.

I heard it a lot, sometimes in mid-afternoon, but mostly in the early morning, when the light would kiss the riverine forest for the first time. On one specific morning when I went to look specifically for Schalow’s turaco, not all the hippos had returned to the river, with one in particular tearing metronomically at the grass outside my tent. 

Easing the zip open ever so slowly, tooth by tooth, I tip-toed behind its backside (the hippo), relatively relaxed in that I wasn’t between this riverhorse and its river. “Relatively” because the scene of one of them thundering into Zambia’s Luangwa river at about 40km/h from a few years previous was fresh in my mind. 

Chundu Island, in the middle of the Zambezi River. Zambia is to the left, Zimbabwe to the right, with hippos, crocodiles and elephant in between. (Photo: Angus Begg)

Distinctive call

Regardless, despite hearing and following its distinctive call – as soon as I reached the spot where I thought it to be, it was gone – I couldn’t find the bird. Which was a bit disappointing, as I’d had good fortune a couple years ago when seeking out Pel’s fishing owl on Tsowa Safari Island, a few kilometres upriver. 

What I did have were first-light song contests between family flocks of southern boubous and palm-collared thrush, with a yellow-throated apalis and bearded woodpecker getting in the odd peep, all capped off by the baby-like crying of the trumpeter hornbill pair in the tree next to my tent.

I was having such fun ticking off this list that I momentarily felt that if it wasn’t for my tent, I could have imagined myself in the land that time forgot. That is until Christoph Ndlovu, one of Dardley’s team and a guide at Chundu, strode past, heading for the kitchen with a stainless steel implement under his arm.

Trumpeter hornbills on Chundu island. (Photo: Angus Begg)

That steel thread was carried through to the sundowner cruise, where Dardley used his tongs to drop the ice into my glass. 

Just by dint of the number of years I’ve lived, I have been fortunate to witness many unforgettable sunsets around the globe, the most memorable almost always in the bushveld and near significant bodies of water. Greece and Cape Town are right up there. But if I was pushed to declare my best, it would probably be the Zambezi River. With its “props” of statement afternoon storm clouds, flocks flying home just above the water, both riverbanks lined with towering trees, accompanied by the soundtrack of the clichéd African bush, the ingredients are pretty much unbeatable.   

Sunrise, in contrast, never invites one to linger, in a hurry to get on with a day that starts pre-4am with the birds. 

We took that invitation on the second of my two mornings. Conrad Ncube, the boat skipper, dropped us early (to beat the late November heat) on the Zimbabwean riverbank after coffee and a rusk, and we set off walking into the Zambezi National Park.

It was quiet on this particular piece of mainland, with bleached skeletons and bones in dark, hard-baked cotton-soil complemented by snap-dry fledgling mopane trees and the fresh, not-quite-cleaned skull of a baboon some way off from leopard tracks. Even the birds were quiet. 

Solitude, quiet and wilderness

Being surrounded by such solitude, quiet and wilderness is an exclusive experience impossible to describe to a first-time safari client from a crowded world city, especially those in the Global North.

I thought of that when we passed a warthog waiting to cross the road as we entered Victoria Falls town, soon after we’d passed a very young male elephant doing the testosterone dance while his family browsed on the bushes. 

Read more: Karoo Keepsakes — Racehorse Legends, Dashing Dassies, Dancing Cranes, Sock Puppets and the Manners of Meerkats

He made us late for my meeting, a catch-up with my hands-down favourite African arts destination, Elephant’s Walk, a collection of standout galleries, workshops and people stories, all connected by wildlife. 

This is where Obert Monga, an artist based at Elephant Walk shopping precinct, Victoria Falls, creates palm ivory pendants, and Moses Kalembela creates baobab magic on elephant dung paper. Where Joe Mutoko, the head silversmith at the Ndau Collection, leads his team, and where his daughter Tariro crafts jewellery from poachers’ snares – an initiative known as Mopane Snare Wire – recovered from the park we’d just left. 

Obert Monga and Moses Kalembela are two premium artists working out of the art precinct in Victoria Falls' Elephant Walk shopping village. Palm ivory pendants with detailed inlays and scrimshaw and baobab magic on elephant dung paper are their respective fortés. (Photo: Angus Begg)

When not creating his jewellery, Obert Monga is mentoring the young women creating jewellery from poachers' snares recovered from the nearby national park. (Photo: Angus Begg)

And this is where my friend from the Philippines bought his second wedding ring. We’d previously shot documentaries in Mozambique and Hwange National Park, and Aaron had fallen in love with the country. So when I bumped into him and his wife, newly married, there in Elephant’s Walk, I knew they’d love the Mopane story as much as the jewellery. The fact that they already had a ring didn’t seem to matter.

Zimbabwe, especially this corner of Matabeleland North, reveals layers of unfolding stories, digging deep under your skin. DM

Angus is an experienced Africa journalist and private guide, designing and leading his African Storybook safaris on request throughout the continent.  

http://www.hartleys-safaris.co.za/Special-Interest-Itineraries

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