Water Wilderness is a camp up in one of
the inlets of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe. Each couple stays in a very nice
house boat with meals and activities on the Mother Ship.
Lake Kariba was formed over 50 years ago by the building of
the Kariba Dam. These trees are leadwood trees and they are such a dense
heavy wood that they haven't rotted even after all these years. A lot is
done by canoe, but, because the lake is much deeper than when we were there in
'98 and there are many more crocs and hippos, we weren't allowed to canoe by
ourselves.
........because.......
Here we are on the Mother Ship having
breakfast with our Ranger, Obit.
Obit took us for a very interesting walk along
the shore of the lake. We saw waterbok, impala, etc., but one of the
most interesting things was Obit making me a rope bracelet out of fibres pulled
from an open elephant tear on the trunk of a baobab tree. He rolled thin
strings of the tree fibers together on his knee.
Here we are waiting to go on our evening
game boat ride. It was so pleasant and different to go around the edges of
the lake seeing game on the shore. Jo and Ed saw their first buffalo
here.
We watched an elephant for quite a while. His name was Pierce because
of the hole in his ear. Don't you love the casual way he rests his
trunk over one of his tusks!
The elephants in this area are very
reddish because that's the color of the soil. Pierce swam from the island
to the shore and climbed out all wet and glistening.
We saw lots of water birds--cormorants, egrets and the like, but the best
was this African fish eagle pair at their nest.
Each day ended with another spectacular sunset.
On to the Hwange National Park next.