Expect the unexpected

Lower Zambezi National park again!

The Lower Zambezi jungle opened her arms and sucked me into her intoxicating mix of heat, sunsets, dust, blood, sweat and raw animal behavior.
Dogs. The painted wolf of Africa. Wild wild scenes. Crocodiles, hippos, elephants and leopards.
We stayed in very comfortable tent structures beneath the canopy of a vast forest of Anna trees. The season had moved to a full spring. Mornings greeting you with a superficial chill, just for a minute as the mist on the low channels running this year, trying to counter the heat fast approaching. The grass is strong and tall now, it grows in strong bushels separate from each other creating pathways between them – perfect leopard ambush paths!
A perfect morning led us to two leopard cubs, stashed in a safe place waiting for Mom to find food. The sun was still low, illuminating the tall grass. The two leopards, not quite adults but not cubs any more, were very playful amongst large termite mounds and tall grass. Try to imagine the low feathery leaves of the winterthorn trees, in front of the lowest red red sunrise light. The grasses shining with an orange-green luminance.
There is no exiting the vehicle anywhere near these sugarcane like grass fields, commonly called suicide grass, since there is no way of telling what animal could be in-between the 2m high clumps. I wanted to get down low to capture the grass in the foreground of the leopard on the mound. Lying on the floor of the vehicle with the door open, I was able to angle the camera and get the shot. We luckily spent at least an hour with these two leopards as we did not encounter them again all of the time we were there.
In this way, nature is the giver, and respecting what nature provides within the boundaries of preservation and protection of the wilderness and all her inhabitants, will bring you the best she has to show.
The photographic material I was imagining capturing on this trip, as with so many plans we try to make, turned out to simply not present itself. Growing up visiting wild parks and living in the semi-bush itself, one learns, there are no guarantees of what you will see, but there are also always surprises you couldn’t have planned for if you tried.
The evenings at this time of year in the valley, are as said, painted in a rich red light. There is an area, a large open plain between forests of winterthorns, where one can often find the wild dogs. Patience in pursuit delivered an elephant bull crossing the plain only to disturb the dogs and reveal them to us. We witness the power struggle between to two species but the dogs know their place and retreat.
We were to encounter these dogs on a hunt the following red dusty evening. Have I described a dog hunt before, I wonder? Well I have yet to witness one quite like this was… the hunt began in the cool dark of the forests. The forests, although deep and lush, have ample space between the trees where grasses and mosses grow, being lower vegetation than the tough sugarcane like bushels of suicide grass, visibility is good and one can see deep between the trees. The haze of blue light created by the mixture of yellow sunlight between the feathery green leaves of the trees covers the forest with a very peaceful, cool aura.
The pack of 23 dogs trots purposefully between the trees in the low vegetation, sniffing, scanning and working as a very experienced unit. We have an elevated view from the vehicle and follow their movements with our eyes. There are two other vehicles around and we wait on an indication of direction from the movements of the pack.
The dogs act on instinct and practice I guess. Within seconds they have split into groups and are chasing impala. The hunt is on but all we know is the antelope are scattering and it seems like there are dogs all over the place -we were watching them but once they move, we are just clumbsy fools in our big vehicles.
Each vehicle picks a direction. We head to an open clearing where the red dust is illumated into a deeper orange as it seems something is going down .. we are in luck .. 5 dogs are trying to bring down a very large impala ram. They attack its back inner legs and try to disable it, the antelope falls in the attack and the dogs have it down on its belly in the dust and they feast on the live ram ferociously as if it could disappear somehow at any second. They communicate with the rest of the pack and more dogs join within minutes and they feed well that night.
This feeding frenzy seems savage to us by human terms but the noise and sounds of the kill can attrack bigger predators and the smaller pack ( the 5 on this Ram ) have no surety of the distance of the rest of the pack from them, should a lion or leopard or pack of hyena arrive on the scene, they could loose their kill.
The social structure of the pack, is also such that they take care of each other as a whole, meaning, they share food amongst them. They risk losing the meal if they try to drag it somewhere safer or wait for the other members to arrive and eat, so whomever is at the site, eats as much as possible as fast as possible, and should the rest of the pack not find food or not be able to join them, they will regurgitate some of their meal on meeting up again, so everyone keeps their strength to enable them to hunt and move with the pack still.
Witnessing the skill and power of the five dogs in this hunt was a real lesson in the meticulous workings of nature. These painted wolves of africa are an incredible species.
The wild dog has been a very big loser in the human wildlife conflict. Often, in fenced parks, the dogs are thriving but the packs outgrow the protected land available needed to sustain them. Sadly, there are not enough areas big enough or void of humans to run dogs and they often must be culled. In an unfenced eco system, nature balances the dog population. The lower Zambezi valley is close to the most open / unfenced uninhabited wildlife are but to the far western side, humans are encroaching in the game management areas where they can own private land for recreation and fishing.
I was travelling with Escape Safari co at the Classic Zambia camps of Kutali and Chula island. This area of the zambezi river has many islands across the river all the way to the Zimbabwean side. There are also long channels that flow inland toward the escarpment and back out to the Zambezi river again. One such channel is a fairly well known and permanent channel, called the Discovery channel. This channel has some real risks of crocodile and hippo attacks and many camps do not canoe along it with guests anymore.
My guides, from Classic Zambia, had lived on and traversed this channel most of their lives and I felt the risk was worth it, not to mention it is said to be one of the most beautiful to canoe. Viewing wildlife from the water was also fast becoming my new favourite thing.
Chula island, is surrounded by the Discovery channel. My tent looked out at the main Zambezi river on the southern side of the island. A most tranquil place to find myself. My shower was a fenced open outside area under the winterthorn trees.

Canoeing the discovery channel, I was a little apprehensive, but I said my prayers and settled with the knowledge that if I was to die in this channel, what a way to go! Hee hee and then prayed for the hand of God over his creatures so I could live to glorify His creation. Well clearly, I lived and how unbelievably glorious it was. Perhaps the notorious nature of the channel added some drama to the experience but there was almost no drama, in fact our guide explained that he had never experienced the discovery channel this peaceful before.
Famous last words were barely uttered when, as we were exiting the channel, my guide remembered there was often a waterbuck that liked to cross the gap… true to his word, the buck started to jump across but at a much more urgent pace. My canoe was well positioned, and I shot the buck with a wide lens in hand to capture the scene, only to discover there was a massive crocodile chasing after the waterbuck and it launched into the air behind the buck and in my frame – whoo-hoo! I got it, and the waterbuck survived but I doubt he crossed the gap for a long while afterward.
Again I say, you need to be ready for anything in the wild. One reason I find wild spaces so interesting is simply because you can never have seen it all. We passed many hippo pods in the water on our canoes. They are super scary right next to you and we did have to have a stern word with a couple of territorial bulls but mostly, being low on the water looking up at ebony and winterthorn trees, lush grass banks with amazing birdlife from Kingfishers, bee eaters, goliath herons, storks, ibis, little black crakes, and many other birds that you could not approach on foot, just go about their business around you. Most animals move nervously away but if you are calm and unthreatening, you can sit right alongside a mother elephant and a new baby playing in the water or a giraffe drinking , with a whole new perspective.
It seems animals are really quite comfortable with us in the boats, especially canoes. The canoe is virtually silent and we are at a lower level than the animals I guess. This silent slide through the wilderness is also an absolute treat for your ears, the sound of the wild is a very real calm, something I was desperate for on this trip.
Lower Zambezi valley was fast becoming a big favorite on my list of places in the wild. Being able to go this far east in the valley meant there was very little human traffic anywhere near me, giving you the real feeling of escape into the wild.