Elephant, canoes and paranoia.
16th August
Back from our 3 day canoe safari –
Glad to be alive really
I was feeling really anxious about the Hippos and Crocs, and having 2 children that do the opposite of everything I say I had a concern that they might be a little to young for this trip.
Well I was the only one that was completely terrified and living in a high state of anxiety. There were 2 other couples that joined us on this adventure Beate and Frank from Germany and Bekah and Hal from the USA,they all seemed so calm and took things in there stride… I think someone could probably write a comedy program called “The Bickersons” about the happenings on Rupert and Sarah’s canoe. I drove Rupert completely mad with my paranoia. Although he was an extremely competent oarsmen, when I saw a hippo I began to freak out and as we saw approx 200 maybe 300 hippos I did a lot of freaking out. In fact the crocs, which were the size of the canoe, were the least of my problem - the kids were in the same canoe as the guide - which was very sensible as my hysteria was then only contained to our canoe.
Floating down the Zambezi wasnt hard work at all, we stopped for lunch breaks along the way visited a village met where me met with the headmaster of the local school which seems to be mainly funded from the outside , there was lots of activity in the village, men making bricks, building homes, women collecting water from 2 fresh water sources which we used to fill up our water bottles…
The safari tour we were on set up camp ahead of us everyday , no luxury tents though just the basic equipment and grub - which really makes you realise that we dont need much in life.
Rupert thinks I would make a really good canoe guide as I spent most of the trip pointing out all the hidden dangers to our guide… and it didn’t stop there. As we were camping every night in ground tents, I also took on the role of night watchman. At one of our camps someone kindly shared the story of what happened the night before we arrived.
An elephant picked up a woman’s tent whilst she was sleeping in it (the elephant apparently wanted the oranges she had in the tent). She had the foresight to un zip the tent and jump out just before the elephant trampled the tent to death to get to the oranges and it all ended well.
Apparently elephants go mad for fruit. So don’t keep them in the tent and everything will be fine. I did sleep quite well as Evans, our guide, kept a light on next to the tents as elephants do not like lights ?.
Would I do it again? Probably not.
Tomorrow we are on our way to Zim and onto Harare