THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 25, 1995 TAG: 9506230043
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, TRAVEL EDITOR
LENGTH: Long : 232 lines
THE LEOPARD had very nearly killed Albert Paradzai. But that was several years ago, and now the Ndebele professional guide is able to tell the story not only in intricate and harrowing detail but with great humor.
His audience listened spellbound.
The leopard was creating havoc in a small settlement in Zimbabwe, mauling dogs and chickens and other domestic animals, and Albert, then a park warden, had gone out ``for what I thought would be a clean-cut job.''
Nearly everything went wrong. The leopard took him by surprise. ``Once they attack,'' he explains, ``you haven't got much of a chance.'' In the end, he got off a shot that dispatched the leopard, but not before he was badly mauled.
Curiously, the vivid memory of that sunrise encounter had in no way diminished Albert's admiration for the big cat or his desire to track the graceful night stalker.
Which is what we were doing now.
Driving in darkness in an open Land Cruiser across the undulating vedlt deep in Hwange National Park under a brilliant canopy of stars, Albert heard the agitated clucking of guinea fowl in the tree tops.
Then we spotted the leopard - about 2 years old, probably female, about 120 pounds, he said.
As we approached the tree, the leopard leaped into its lower branches and climbed, oblivious to the spotlight Albert held. Almost immediately the top of the tree seemed to explode with guinea fowl. They are not the best fliers in the world, but when a leopard is after them, they put a lot of effort into it.
Down came the leopard, loping off at a rather fast pace. We followed in the vehicle.
This chase - the leopard after the guineas, us after the leopard - went on for a full 15 minutes in the dark night before we dropped off to let her hunt in peace. ``That's the longest sighting I've ever experienced,'' Albert said.
So that's what game drives are all about. I hadn't quite known what the term ``game drive'' really meant until I had entered the vast wilds of Zimbabwe on a game-viewing safari. I had thought perhaps people ``drove'' the game past some viewing spot. No, you get in an open four-by-four vehicle - Land Rovers and Toyota Land Cruisers usually - and drive in search of game in its natural habitat.
And here in Zimbabwe are excellent and well-maintained parks and reserves that contain an abundance of wildlife species including the ``big five'' - elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and cape buffalo. They are given that special status by hunters because each is capable of killing man if pushed to that point.
The country's premier national parks, Hwange on the edge of the great Kalahari sands, Mana Pools along the banks of the Zambezi River and Matusadona on the shores of Lake Kariba - a man-made power reservoir as large as the Chesapeake Bay - are three of the best in Africa and are not over-touristed. The country is deeply committed to reconciling tourism with the delicate balance of nature. Zimbabwe's licensed professional guides must meet the most rigid standards on the continent; they are excellent.
What you see in the preserves is all natural. There is no baiting to draw animals. You see what is there.
I easily claimed my ``big five'' trophies, but only four of them on film. The leopard was impossible to ``shoot'' at night, and I really shouldn't count the 800-pound ``baby'' white rhino because it was an orphan protected around the clock from poachers - and was feeding from an enormous bottle.
In the dusty, rust-red sandstone hills of Matsuadona near Kariba I saw, just after dawn, my first elephant in the wild - the first of many - lurking among the low scrub trees and thornbushes, looming very large and mottled gray as a much-used chalkboard.
``This one's quite cheeky,'' said guide Mike Rooney of the young bull, maybe 20 years old that Mike seemed to know personally.
The speech of Zimbabwean whites is much like that of Australians or New Zealanders or South Africans, but many of their expressions are very British. ``Cheeky,'' for instance.
The elephant swayed back and forth, dancing as it were, and flapped his ears and waved his trunk. ``He has an absolute infatuation with people and Land Rovers,'' Mike said. ``Just look at him.''
Showing off, I suppose, the elephant effortlessly broke down a small tree, tearing its shallow roots from the thin earth.
Later I saw a large male lion lying beside the dirt road as we traveled out of Makololo Safari Camp deep into Hwange's wilderness. We slowly drew to within 20 feet and the lion hardly moved. You can do anything you want to do when you're at the top of the food chain. Obviously he wasn't hungry. Sometimes lions are.
At Chikwenga Safari Camp on the Zambezi, visitors are not allowed to walk from the open-air dining area to the thatched-roof sleeping huts at night without an armed escort. ``We had a bit of a lion problem last month,'' someone said.
Sometimes, but fortunately not often, it becomes necessary to give a problem animal the ``.458 treatment.'' That would be a solid steel bullet, nearly a half-inch in diameter, powered out of a rifle barrel by 500 grains of gunpowder at incredible velocity. It's a sure stopper.
At Chikwenga, in a small boat, we maneuvered VERY carefully past nearly submerged hippos and crocodiles in the Zambezi to watch a small herd of elephants and three ornery cape buffalo on the marshy banks. A pair of birds was perched on the back of one buffalo. They were red-billed ox peckers - blood eaters, looking for ticks on their host.
I watched a fish eagle, white neck and gray body, crash to the water in search of prey. This is Zimbabwe's national bird.
The buffalo, notoriously unpredictable, couldn't decide whether to kill us or keep grazing. They kept looking up, shaking their enormous horns, then looking down again. The elephants, or at least the matriarch, acted as if she'd like to do us harm. They apparently had intended to wade across. The hippos and the crocs paid us little mind.
And so I was able to watch what was perhaps the most gorgeous sunset I have ever witnessed as the great orange ball slipped behind the Zambian escarpment in the distance.
A safari - that's a Swahili word meaning search or quest - is but a part of this remarkable country that shatters the perceptions of Africa that we geographically challenged Americans acquire from 30-second TV sound bites or from Tarzan movies and the like.
There is no deep, dark jungle in Zimbabwe. It is more like the American Southwest with high, semi-arid plains, meandering rivers and higher mountains to the east.
The cities and towns seem more like their American counterparts were, as I vaguely remember, 40 or 50 years ago when life did not move at such a frenzied pace. Oh, they think they have traffic problems in Harare, but they just don't know. Seemed to me that most people were actually walking to work. Imagine that.
In the remote countryside there are tiny villages set amid the dust, where the people - smiling, curious, courteous to visitors - try to make a living tending cattle or goats or tilling the soil. In appearance, not unlike much of the American rural South or Indian reservations in the West.
Zimbabwe is not Mogadishu or Rwanda or Uganda. It is a genuinely multicultural nation. The once-divided communities have gradually come together and resolved their differences; there is a freedom from racism and tribalism that is envied the length and breadth of Africa.
There is no frightful ebola plague; that is in another ``Z'' country, Zaire, on the other side of Zambia, about as far from Zimbabwe as California is from Virginia.
What Zimbabwe is, is often spectacular. The Matobo Hills, for instance: huge domed monoliths of solid stone that look like giant whale backs, and an eerie wind-sculptured landscape of balanced and jumbled rocks that in other places might be called ``Devil's Playground'' or such. But the Ndebele called it Matobo, which means ``bald heads'' and that works as well as any words.
Most spectacular of all is Victoria Falls, the most prominent of all the tourist attractions.
Dr. David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary and explorer, came to this place where the Zambezi takes a dramatic plunge to see what the natives called Mosi-oa-Tunya (Smoke that Thunders). Livingstone was intent on opening up Africa to proper commerce - and Christianity, of course - in hopes of ending the slave trade. He thought the Zambezi, coursing from the interior to the Indian Ocean, might be ``God's highway to the sea.''
Livingstone's quest was often perilous, but on Nov. 16, 1855, he was leading a charmed life. He and some native friends approached the falls from upstream in crude dugout canoes and stepped out on a tiny bit of land, now called Livingstone Island, that clings to the lip of the falls.
This first white man to see the world's largest curtain of cascading water wrote in his journal: ``On sights as beautiful as this, angels in their flight must have gazed.'' He dutifully named it Victoria Falls in honor of his queen.
Now in its 150 millionth fantastic year (give or take), it remains one of nature's supreme masterpieces, still in its pristine, primeval state. Its thundering power is truly awesome; speech is nearly impossible, but words are inadequate anyway.
The falls are more than a mile wide with a maximum drop of 355 feet - more than twice as wide and deep as Niagara Falls. When the Zambezi is at full flow, the area is enveloped in the heavy mist of its own ecosystem that has produced along the rims of the rocky gorge a lush tropical rain forest in the midst of an otherwise semi-arid savannah landscape.
Below the falls, the Zambezi roars and crashes through deep switchback gorges of sheer black basalt rock, through some of the wildest, most rugged and remote terrain in Zimbabwe.
This is the ultimate, survivable challenge to whitewater rafters - Class 5 - violent rapids with strong currents, irregular waves, major drops and numerous obstacles. Plus, crocodiles that survived the drop over the falls. I am not making this up.
I've been there, done that.
I've tasted the swirling, crashing Zambezi and felt my heart pounding and my hands grow numb as I clung to the tossing rubber raft. I took the best - or worst - it had to offer: 16 incredible rapids with names like Stairway to Heaven, Overland Truck Eater, The Mother (of All Rapids?), Silent Assassin, Washing Machine, Terminator 1 and 2, and Oblivion.
Yes, I've done the Zambezi.
And you know what the toughest part was? Getting down to the river on a crude, steep, narrow and occasionally slippery path, and then back out again over a similar path, except maybe steeper. The hike out, I'm told, is the equivalent of climbing the stairs of a 70-story building.
The rapids transit, by comparison, was a piece of cake.
You could do it, though. Really. If two of my companions could, you could do the Zambezi.
Here we are at the bottom of the gorge. Seven of us, wearing crash helmets and life jackets, have climbed aboard the raft with oarsman Hippo (real name Mendris Ngoma, or Blessings of Buffalo) and his assistant Levy. I get in the rear because I have done whitewater and I am no dummy.
The four in the front begin a pre-trip drill, under the commands of Hippo, that basically involves standing in a very uncomfortable crouched position, butt high, then falling forward on one another when he give the command ``High side!'' In theory this redistribution of weight helps the raft punch through really tough rapids. In fact, it's like a mugging.
The three of us in the rear, a young married couple from South Africa and me, watch.
Quickly one of the high-siders, a woman from Britain, says she's had enough of ``this heavy man'' falling on her. She wants to move to the rear. We need four in the front. Would anyone volunteer? I have been in the Army; I do not volunteer for anything. Neither does the couple.
Then the woman takes it to the next level: ``I broke two ribs a couple of weeks ago. It still hurts. I have to move to the rear.''
``What?'' asks Hippo. ``What are you doing here?''
Obviously now, someone will have to switch. I do not move. It's not my fault she has broken ribs.
Then the woman next to me says, ``I probably shouldn't be up there. I'm pregnant.''
``WHAT?!'' asked Hippo. ``How much?''
``Five and a half months.''
She looks rather proud of herself somehow. Her husband looks rather sheepish.
``I don't believe this,'' Hippo said after a speechless moment or two. ``You definitely shouldn't be here.''
He didn't bother to explain the risk to both her and her baby. She wouldn't have gotten it, anyway.
``Well, somebody's going to have to move and your husband is staying with you just in case. . . .''
So, that is how I headed into the Zambezi - face first, up front, on the high side. And I loved it. ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN
ABOVE: Victoria Falls is more than twice as wide and deep as
Niagara.
FAR LEFT: Albert Paradzai, a professional guide, survived an attack
by a leopard.
NEAR LEFT: Photographers on safari track a trio on elephants near
Lake Kariba.
Map
STAFF
by CNB