Lifeblood of Africa

“Men may come and men may go but I go on forever.” — The Brook by Alfred Lord Tennyson

By Erwin Bursik

THE proverbial lifeblood of our continent — water — is pumped across the heartland of southern Africa via the mighty Zambezi and Kavango rivers. Four countries — Angola, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe — intersect in vast wetlands and central plains that, in broad terms, provides the precipitation base for most areas north of the Tropic of Capricorn. This year’s above-normal rainfall has swelled these two massive “arteries”, promising life-giving water and increased vegetation growth as far afield as Moçambique and northern South Africa.

The dark mood of the Zambezi at sunset.

Team Namusha. Dick Pratt and Erwin Bursik with all the skippers including general manager Annetjie Theron, who also underwent training.

It was into this heartland that Dick Pratt and I, together with our wives, travelled in late February 2020 to visit three of Gondwana Collections’ “jewels” — Namushasha River Lodge on the Kavango River system as it branches into the Okavango Delta, and Mubala Camp and Mubala Lodge on the mighty Zambezi River.

We started off by visiting the Victoria Falls and witnessing it in all its splendour as moderately high water levels spilled over the cliff into the cauldron in the gorge below. This wonder of the world is indeed just that — a natural wonder that explorer David Livingstone came across over 100 years ago. Walking along its verge after viewing it first during “The Flight of the Angels” in a helicopter makes an even greater impact. It truly is the experience of a lifetime.

From Victoria Falls we drove through Botswana over the Chobe River into the eastern part of Namibia’s Caprivi panhandle to reach Gondwana Collection’s Mubala Camp and Lodge 40km east of Katima Mulilo.

We felt privileged to sit on the deck of Mubala Lodge, Gondwana’s recently opened five-star lodge, and watch the sun set over the might Zambezi and Zambia’s flood plain to the west, experiencing the morphing of day to night in a kaleidoscope of colours that even the greatest of photographs cannot do justice to. That in itself made it well worth the time, money and effort required to get to Mubala Lodge.

Wind against river current can make for interesting boating conditions.

The real reason our group travelled into this magnificent area of Africa was ostensibly to work. Back in 2015 Dick and I undertook the task of providing advanced skipper training at Hakusembe Lodge and Namushasha Lodge, both on the Kavango River. Our training was so well accepted that Gondwana Collection, Namibia’s biggest tourist lodge group, asked if we could train of ten of their skippers at their Mubala resorts on the Zambezi and repeat the course at Namushasha for eight skippers.

Whilst the skipper training is basically the same, the boating environment at these two locations is totally different. On the Zambezi you have a wide, fast flowing volume of water whereas at Namushasha the myriad narrow channels still hold reasonably fast flowing water as the Kavango River enters the Okavango Delta and fans out over the vast flood plains. One complication of navigating these narrow waterways is figuring out where you actually are, and another is encountering hippo pods that hole up in these tributaries approximately half a kilometre apart. Those aspects — along with hidden sand banks and dead-end tributaries — test both local knowledge as well as advanced “boat driving”skills.

In my articles on these lodges published in the July/August 2015 and January/February 2020 issues of Ski-Boat I discussed the fishing opportunities for targeting tigerfish and the variety of large bream and barbel caught in the region, especially in the Zambezi. Apart from the pleasure cruising, game viewing and total relaxation offered at all these lodges, early morning and late afternoon fishing of these waters can prove very worthwhile.

In describing a river’s twisting journey, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s final line says it all:“Men may come and men may go but I go on forever.”