Our home for the next six days.
Our Brothers’ Fishing Trip this year became a different and much-anticipated venture – a six day trip from Chirundu down the Zambezi River to Kanyemba on a fishing pontoon/houseboat journey operated by River God Adventures. Brothers David, Tim and Mart were joined by Rich for a what for each of them proved to be a journey of a lifetime.
Our team.
The great difference on this trip was that every day was different and every night was spent in a quite remote and magical location, accessible only by boat and safe only with the presence of a professional hunter.
Our hosts Guy and Bruce.
One of the highlights of the trip was the eight kilometre walk down Chikwenya Island. On previous trips we had stopped for lunch on the island. But we never knew of the natural wonderland that lay beyond the shore.
Chikwenya Island is a paradise for game…
We surprised this hippo, and ourselves, as he was hidden beneath the bank…
We were able to get close to these elephant…
And to these buffalo…
On the night before full moon, we camped on an island in the middle of the river.
Looking upstream, we watched the sun set.
And looking down river we watched the moon rise.
We shared the island with a number of residents including this elephant
which continued to dine while we did.
Having a professional hunter with us meant that no game, however big or small, could move on either side of the river without being spotted. Guy kept pointing out animals, quite invisible to the rest of us, as soon as they blinked an eye or took a breath.
One bonus of his expertise was his sighting of a group of lionesses which Guy walked us up to.
We camped on this sandbank at the entrance to the Mupata gorge…
…and on another sandbank at the eastern end of the gorge.
Although it was a fishing trip, we did not have too much success, despite having lines in the water at every opportunity. But everyone had some success.
My Catch
Once through The Gate, we passed the Red Cliffs in the face of an incredibly strong upstream wind; the strongly flowing Zambezi River was being driven upstream by the wind and navigating this stretch of the river was an exciting couple of hours.
Our last night was spent in the comparative luxury of Sawa-Sawa Lodge near the confluence of the Luangwa and Zambezi rivers, with a Zambian village across the river and the mountains of Mozambique visible just downstream.
The following morning, Guy drove us to the Chipota airstrip where our plane soon arrived
to take us back to Harare…..
David Coughlan
Elizabeth Coughlan
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