I can honestly say that this year’s season was one of the longest one. After one and half month in Argentina we repacked our bags at home left our kiddo at grandma and flew to Zambia to kayak the mighty Zambezi river.
Our first time at Zambezi was at 2009. After we heard they are planning to dam it and all the amazing white water will turn into the lake we had to go there again to see it last more time.
I remembered the river and the rapids but still the first day on the river after 8 years was a bit adrenaline. This river have some magic and just walking down the gorge is so amazing. Walking down to put in is not that difficult as climbing up for take out. You can pay porters 1dolar each way to carry your kayak and support them because for most of them it’s the only job. When you reach the river you suddenly appear at the bottom of gorgeous canyon with super high walls. We always sat on water at the rapid #1 - boiling pot. As soon as you sit on the water you start to feel the power of the river. Massive waves, big holes and unpredictable whirlpools will surprise you every few meters. Rapid #2 is sweet wave to surf and if the level is good you can play there all day long. Each rapid has some characteristics name as morning glory, stairways to heaven, guliver’s travels, commercial suicide, overland truck eater and many more. Most of the time we run rapids from 1 to 10 or 14, but you can do it to 21, 25, even to dam site or to lake Kariba. 8 years ago we run whole section from Victoria falls to lake Kariba where were many crocs and hippos. This time we saw many crocs even on the upper rapids which scared me a lot. One huge one is living down the #9 but you could see some almost after each rapid. One day we made a trip to Botswana to Chobe national park. We saw many wild animals like elephants, lions, hippos, zebras or crocodiles but actually in Zambezi river where we kayaked every day we saw a paddled with much more crocodiles as we saw during our safari.
After two amazing weeks we are on our way home to spend Christmas with our family. Unfortunately I think this was our last visit of Zambia and Zambezi river because as I mentioned before in next few year they plan to damage all beautiful rapids and make there big dam instead. I wish for some miracle so it stay like this at least few more years till our son is old enough to go there and kayak all the rapids with us.
Cheers.
Nina
