Tale guide

Sink or swim!

No humans nor camera equipment were injured or damaged during the making of this story!

The Chobe river forms the Northeast border between Botswana and Zambia.

Kasane is its main commercial center which lies at the end of the so-called ‘Elephant road’ that runs virtually due north from Francistown.

The river that flows from the Northwest én route to the Zambesi where the two rivers merge at the Kazungula bridge, is an vital source of sustenance particularly in the dry season for large breeding herds of elephants, buffalo and every other kind species that abound the southern continent. As is to be expected, the birdlife is similarly spectacular both in terms of variety and numbers.

Of course, what lies in the water is equally impressive and dangerous particularly if viewed in thin-hulled, open cruise boats.

There are as many crocodiles and hippos in the river as animals on the islands and banks and they are enormous by comparison to their relatives further south.

Hippos are considered amongst the most dangerous animals in the wild because of their highly aggressive and unpredictable nature not to mention their ability to bite right through a small boat with their incredibly powerful jaws. And as large and cumbersome as they may seem, growing up to one and half ton and more, they move with unerring speed in the water and can run up to 30 kilometres an hour on dry land.

Over the years Kasane has developed into a major tourist attraction with tens of thousands of visitors flying in from all over the world to take in the breathtaking spectacle of the wildlife from closeup vantage points on river cruises provided for by the numerous international hotels located along the Botswana banks of the Chobe.

A local skipper told us that on one occasion a party of Japanese tourists had a narrow escape when the twin hull river boat they were in hit some submerged rocks and sank.

Very typical of foreign tourists to Africa, many of these visitors were decked out in safari kits and bush hats or pith helmets and almost everyone carried expensive digital cameras with accompanying high-powered telephoto lenses.

As the boat slowly sank beneath the surface, the passengers frantically treaded water, shouting and screaming as they made their way across ten or twenty meters of crocodile and hippo infested water and all, without exception, appeared to disregard the need to swim in favour of holding their camera equipment high above the heads as they kicked their way to dry land!

Miraculously no one was killed or injured in the incident and to the best of our knowledge no camera equipment was damaged during their close encounter!

When we discovered the Chobe twenty years back, it was still a remote destination known mainly to off road adventurers who entered the Chobe national park and made their way through the largely uncontrolled wilderness of the Chobe, Savuti and Moremi reserves to Maun and the Okavango swamps.

We had camped at an immaculate site at Toro Safari Lodge, on the river bank, and it wasn’t long before we booked a seat on a local evening river cruise.

The twin hulled boat was propelled by an outboard motor and crewed by two local Botswana rangers. The boat was full, with about ten to twelve tourists including ourselves and we set off a couple of hours before sunset.

The trip was fabulous, as was to be expected. After about an hour or so of slowly zigzagging across the river from one cluster of game to a lioness drinking at the water’s edge, a number of elephant families swimming across from one island to another and much more, the skipper turned the boat west and sailed up stream past the Chobe Game Lodge where Liz Taylor and Richard Burton had held their second honeymoon years before.

As we admired the setting sun and enjoying the gentle ride on the calm waters, there was a sudden jolt and a loud crunching sound from below as the boat lurched.

My heart stopped! Were we going to have to swim?

The motor cut and everyone held their collective breath as we waited to see whether we were taking in water.

We turned to the skipper who looked a tad bewildered and started mouthing off in his native lingo to his shipmate. Eventually the skipper announced that we had ‘unfortunately’ hit some submerged rocks and the propeller of the outboard had been damaged.

The ‘good news’ was that the hull didn’t appear to have been holed. He would radio for back up from Kasane and we could look forward to being towed home ‘just now’.

By this time the sun had almost dropped below the far horizon. Along the distant islands we could see the dark outline of hundreds, possibly thousands, of antelope, buffalo, elephant and giraffe grazing in the lush vegetation. They moved ghostlike in a mist of swarming insects that hovered around them.

It was very quiet, save for the lapping of water against the boat. A very eery and uneasy atmosphere descended as I contemplated whether the crocodiles and hippos had sensed that a dinner opportunity lay paralysed before them.

It wasn’t long before darkness enveloped us. A passenger lit up a cigarette, the tip glowing in the pitch blackness of the night. People whispered to each other as if to avoid letting anyone or anything know we felt particularly vulnerable and out of water, so to speak.

As the night came, a light breeze picked up off the water and although the daytime temperatures were in their early thirties, the night-time felt surprisingly cooler by comparison.

For those readers not familiar with the African meaning of ‘just now’, it can mean anything between five minutes and a couple of days before whatever you are waiting for is expected to happen.

In the dead of night under a moonless sky, surrounded by the regular grunts of hippo nearby, the minutes drag by very slowly into an hour and maybe then some.

We strained down river to see if we could make out the light of a distant river boat or even hear the distant throbbing of an outboard motor, but nothing. Occasionally the skipper’s radio would break into a buzz of distorted speech.

“He’s coming just now”, the skipper would announce for the second or third time.

Eventually, after what seemed more than a few hours and just as we started to think that by the grace of God, we may have to try and make it to morning, a loan river boat appeared out of the darkness and pulled up alongside.

At this point, we all thought that our boat would be tied by a rope to our new arrival that would simply tow us back to the town. But this wasn’t to be as for some inexplicable reason, our rescue team had forgotten to bring a tow rope with them!

“Esch” – this is another African exclamation, a little harder to translate.

I suppose the closest I can get to a definition would be “I can’t believe!” accompanied by raising both hands in the air and having a questionable expression etched across one’s face.

After a collaborative debate in which a couple of our more exasperated passengers decided to join in, it was decided that we would bring the two boats alongside each other and all the passengers seated along the one side of the boat would lean over the side and hold onto the railing of the other boat and in this manner, we would chug our way home.

As expected, it was a slow journey and even at that speed the wind was cold and occasionally tinged with moisture, while many of us anxiously continued to fear the possible arrival of an ill-tempered hippopotamus.

But we made it home after many hours on the river, cameras intact and pictures saved and with another tale to tell!