“The Zambezi is stunning in its beauty sunsets, rather dull flora along the shores and the most terrible monsters on the planet,” - these words began his travel essays correspondent of National Geographic magazine Ian Belcher. This man made an incredible canoe trip along the African Zambezi River. We offer fragments of his essays for your attention.
Straight way to heaven
A giant hippopotamus - impala in the local dialect - flops 20 meters from our canoe. A huge carcass protrudes out of the water so that only the immense back and part of the head with ears are visible. The animal then plunges into. The gray waters of the Zambezi, so that in 10 seconds you can emerge from the shallow water and begin to wallow in the mud with a blissful grunt.
A paper bag that I just crumpled up and threw into the water, submerged with an oar, passes us downstream, appearing six meters away. And right there, a four-meter crocodile, brown as an old log, pounces on him out of nowhere. Instantly tearing the package to shreds, the reptile silently plunges into the depths. With quiet horror, I imagine what it would be like if I decided to cool down a little and put my hand, worn out by an oar, into the water …
When I told the locals that I was going on a canoe trip down the Zambezi, they began to convince me that this was the direct route to heaven …
Where is paradise?
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One of the white guides told me that up to ten people are killed every year by impala attacks in this section of the Zambezi. Canoe safari is the most dangerous type of hunting in Africa today. So our 13-day trip down the Zambezi began with a safety briefing. The first commandment: do not go on a boat to hippos. And if you are already nearby, do not make any sounds, otherwise the animals will take you for an enemy who violated the boundaries of their possessions, and will tear you to shreds. This is good advice: the weight of a hippopotamus reaches three tons, and their reaction is rapid.
Less than an hour after sailing from the coastal town of Chirundu, a surprise awaited us. A small, a ton, hippo noisily emerged from the river literally a meter from my canoe, then went under the water again and with a snort rushed into the coastal reeds, from where he watched us.
Guide Leonard saw fit to cheer us up with one of his many stories. It turns out that almost at the same place a month and a half ago, a huge hippo sank a large fishing boat, in which a German family of five and a guide were sitting. The poor fellows had to flee to the muddy shallows. The guide tried to swim ashore for help, but was attacked by a crocodile and barely managed to return to the same bank. Finally he reached the shore by crawling through deep mud. Crawled and lost consciousness. The poor fellow would certainly have died from the teeth of the hyenas gathered nearby, but he was saved by a buffalo grazing nearby, he drove away the predators with huge horns. Meanwhile, the German dad-burgher, seized with horror, mother and their three children repelled the attacks of crocodiles with the surviving oars. In the end, two children were dragged away by crocodiles,a poor woman rushed after one of them into the water and did not appear again, and dad himself went crazy from the horror he had experienced …
For the next three days we sailed along a fairly straight section of the river. At night, they molested the shore, put up a tent and kindled a huge fire to scare away predators. We were on duty for two hours with a carbine at the ready. I realized that there is a paradise on Earth. He is where there are no hippos.
On my territory - no, no
And now - something interesting about the fauna of the Zambezi, the third largest of the four largest rivers in Africa.
The hippopotamus, or hippopotamus, lives mainly in water and only from time to time raises its head above the surface in order to draw in air with its nostrils and look around its territory.
During the day, hippos rest in the muddy shallow water. The imposing forms of the beast make us think of it as a clumsy and lazy representative of the fauna of the Black Continent. In fact, this is not so: under water, giant mammals are graceful, light, their movements resemble dance steps. The hippopotamus is not a very distinguished swimmer: having plunged a few meters, he rather moves along the bottom than swims. After spending five to ten minutes under water, he rises to the surface for a new portion of air and dives again. As soon as the sun begins to set, the hippos rush to the shore. They go to pastures, often a couple of kilometers from the river, where they graze all night. An adult hippo can eat about half a centner of grass during this time!
Adult males live in small but well-defined areas that protect against invasion by other males, boats and crocodiles. If the invasion nevertheless occurred, then the boat is destroyed, the crocodile is expelled, and a fierce duel is started with the alien male. Two huge beasts rush at each other, piercing the thick skin of the enemy with huge fangs, hard as steel, and sharp as a chisel blade.
A golden watch ticked on my hand …
Zambezi crocodiles lie on the sandy shores for most of the day, jaws open. One-meter jaws of adults are armed with four-centimeter teeth. The crocodile maintains body temperature between 24 and 27 ° C by submerging its tail in cool water. At the mouths of rivers flowing into the oceans, crocodiles live in salt water. These six-meter monsters easily deal with people, sharks, sea elephants and lions. They always attack from under the water.
More recently, 23-year-old white girl Marion Chatte and her ten-year-old niece Bertha were swimming on a punt ten meters from the shore, pushing off the bottom with poles. Suddenly a crocodile emerged from the depths. Immediately flying into the fragile boat, he grabbed Marion with his huge jaws, threw up, and she went feet first into the open mouth. The reptile immediately disappeared into the foaming water. Bertha screamed. A local resident, Kaiser Volkit, was hunting in a motor boat nearby. Rushing to the wild screams of the girl, he began to lure the predator, slapping the water with a special quok. Only forty minutes later, a hundred meters from the scene of the tragedy, the Kaiser noticed a five-meter monster lying in shallow water with an excessively swollen belly. With two shots from a large-caliber carbine, the hunter smashed the head of the monster and, together with three assistants, pulled the carcass onto the sandbank. When the crocodileopened the belly, we saw that the girl's body was already partially digested. A golden watch ticked on the hand of the disfigured corpse …
And other monsters
The wet lands in the upper reaches of the Zambezi serve as a refuge for a unique species of turtles that live only here, and even in some areas of the Congo River (Zaire). They have a soft shell. They are aggressive predators armed with powerful beaks and claws. They attack a person if he makes a sudden movement. With a wave of a strong clawed paw, such a turtle is capable of ripping open a person's stomach with lightning speed, and with its pick-shaped beak - inflict deep, long-lasting wounds.
The Zambezian monitor lizard is a two- to three-meter reptile. He goes into the water to grab a fish, a frog. Seeks out crocodile and turtle eggs. His saliva and skin secretions are poisonous. If poisonous mucus from its mouth and skin gets into the wound inflicted by the monitor lizard, an adult is unlikely to last three days.
Black-bellied and hairy
There are few large river systems in the world that are as abundant in fish as the waters of the Zambezi. About 550 fish species live here, including six species of catfish, two of which are deadly to humans. The first is the black-bellied catfish, reaching 170 centimeters in length and 60 kilograms in weight. In the daytime, catfish settle at the bottom, trapping prey. Their teeth are sharp as needles. The catfish suddenly clings to the bather's leg, it is very difficult to get rid of it. These creatures are especially dangerous for women rinsing linen and bathing children - hanging on his leg, he pulls the victim to the depths. In an hour or two, only one skeleton remains from the person, so it will be processed by a family of always hungry black-bellied.
The second dangerous species is an electric catfish, the discharge of which is strong enough to knock a person down in the water and paralyze the heart.
In the quiet backwaters of the Zambezi, a red-footed clawed frog with exorbitantly long hind legs, armed (like the front) with three poisonous claws, swims - the only species in the world! These frogs are so slippery from poisonous secretions that it is completely impossible to keep them in your hands. Poisonous mucus quickly enters the bloodstream through human skin and, if not immediately treated, a person dies of heart paralysis within two minutes!
In the western regions of the Zambezi lies another horror of waters - the black hairy toad. If females prefer an aquatic habitat, then males remain on the shore. Toads are covered with three-centimeter hairs, or rather, a mass of thin-walled hair-like skin papillae located on the back, sides and upper legs. The papillae provide intensive oxygen exchange. Among these harmless hairs poisonous ones are masked. An adult, who unknowingly has grabbed a toad, is in danger of two or three days of torment from burning pain in an incredibly swollen hand.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №38. Author: translated from English by Alexander Evteev