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The Elephant Trails
of Chizarira
(First published in African Safari magazine, summer 1999)
One fellow -- he shall remain nameless-- seemed to get boyish pleasure from kicking every second ball of elephant dung, damp or dry.
As most of the countless hundreds of droppings littering every kilometre were as dry as the trail itself, the spot behind this bloke was guaranteed to be the dustiest in the line. I did my best to be the one on his heels as little as possible, as the seven of us frequently changed places and took turns at leading or bringing up the rear.
He was a medical graduate, so I wryly theorised that he was researching the medicinal advantages of breathing powdered elephant droppings.
At the height of the long dry season, the mostly miombo woodland of Zimbabwe's Chizarira National Park is dusty to say the least. Unless it's unnecessarily stirred up, it's not an unpleasant dustiness in the usually calm weather; just notable in the same way that the thick bush is notable. The Australian salute, so futile in deterring flies (seemingly non-existent in Chizarira), is constantly used instead to fend off branches whipping across the narrow elephant trails.
The bush and the dust were close behind the elusive wildlife in making the Chizarira experience for me. I went there because it was time for a different, less comfortable safari experience, to try to walk among the animals rather than be driven among them. 'Try' is a key word.
Also seen, usually at a distance, were zebra, sable antelope, kudu, grysbok, klipspringer, reedbuck, impala, dwarf and slender mongooses, baboon and a leopard, very, very briefly. And a pair of hyena gave themselves a shock by wandering unwittingly into camp one night while people were still up.
That glimpse of the leopard just about made the day for our guide, Leon Varley, such is his enthusiasm for an area he describes as one of the few truly wild places left in southern Africa. Leon, who pioneered walking safaris in Chizarira and other Zimbabwe national parks in the mid-80s, seemed to me to be tireless in his efforts to find animals for us in a place that clearly delights him.
Take the evening we returned to camp in the Chizarira lowlands, along the dry sandy course of the Busi River. We'd walked about 30 kilometres; it was 20 minutes before dark, and we'd just started washing the dust down with cold beer or tea before freshening up for a hearty meal. A lion roared, close by, and jaws dropped when the noise, as if in slow motion, finally penetrated tired and surprised minds.
I don't think I saw Leon Varley move faster at any other time. Calling us to follow, he and Ndebele tracker Stephen Maphosa jumped into the camp vehicle, and we charged into the gathering gloom. Half a kilometre from camp, Stephen spotted the lion's spoor and we left the truck to try to track him down. Night was too close, though, and we had to give up after ten minutes' brisk and fruitless walking.
Leon carries a .458 rifle on every walk. It's a battered close-range 'stopper' which he told us he'd had to use three times in 12 years to protect clients, killing an elephant, a buffalo and a lion. It took us some days to seek out this information, I guess because we were concerned the subject might be an uncomfortable one. In the end, probably accustomed to the question, he replied briefly without hesitation; he offered no elaboration, nor did we ask for it, not even around the campfire at night when his skills as a raconteur came to the fore.
Before we put even a toe in the bush, Leon had made a formal little speech about what we should do to avoid his having to use the rifle. He told us not to run unless he said so; then to do so immediately as a group, keeping him between us and the threat. Nobody was to wait for a final photograph! We were to walk backwards steadily, if he told us to back off.
A threatening move suddenly prompted Leon to issue a short, sharp "Go!" , and one of us had turned and was running almost before the word was out. Almost as quickly, Leon countermanded the order, calling her back and allowing us to watch for another minute or so. Then, it was "back off" time.
In five and a half days, we covered well over 100 kilometres on foot and many more by vehicle on Chizarira's few roads, yet saw only about ten other visitors, most of them on the same day and only very briefly. They included another walking party, led by one of Leon's friends and competitors. We had to move on to where the crowds were, Hwange National Park, to find Leon's favourite, black rhino. His Chizarira safari was marketed as 'The Rhino Trail' until a few years ago when the park's few surviving black rhinos were moved to safer areas to protect them from poachers.
The pleasures of bushwalking and staking out rocky waterholes to wait for animals to drink remained with us in Hwange, despite the throngs of tourists. In areas set aside for walking, we were able to escape the crowds to track lion in the grassland and dwarf mopane of the Shumba Pans, and rhino in the Sinamatella Intensive Protection Zone.
The lions didn't want to know us; nor, it seemed, did the rhinos. All the tracks we found led to country closed to walking, until one morning we surprised a male rhino next to the road. He crashed off into the bush, but calmed down and resumed browsing within a couple of kilometres, still in walking territory and unaware that Stephen and Leon were busily tracking.
We had a breathless few seconds watching the rhino amble across our front, only 15 metres away and separated from us by a couple of flimsy bushes. Leon estimated 10 metres, but I'm more conservative. Stephen tried to entice the rhino to stick around by making what presumably were rhino sounds, but the animal became alarmed and made a swift and noisy departure.
The day produced another triumph. We'd been trying to find a wild dog den known to be in the area. After finding the rhino, we came across the fresh vehicle tracks of a research team studying the dogs-- an easy spoor to follow. A couple of the dogs gave alarm barks as we approached the den, and we saw the pack melt away into the bush.
We assumed the alpha female and her pups remained underground, for we didn't see them. It didn't really matter; the enjoyment was in the search, the finding, and the leaving, with minimum disturbance.
The safari was about to end. Kazuma Pan National Park had been on the itinerary but was dropped because it was temporarily devoid of game. One more day remained, in Zambezi National Park , where we had an exquisite game viewing experience while driving the last few kilometres back to Victoria Falls. It was in complete contrast to our walking experiences but didn't diminish them in the slightest; it just underlined the delights of being in Africa.
Leon Varley, a fully qualified guide for 18 years, thought backpacking safaris had potential when working as a tsetse control officer in Chizarira National Park. He started an outfit called Backpackers Africa, but had to enlarge its scope when it became evident that backpacking alone wouldn't attract enough clients.
Leon Varley Walking Safaris now offers upmarket lodge and 'classic camping' safaris, still emphasising walking, as well as full backpack expeditions in the wildest country and mid-range 'daypack' safaris like the one I went on. They're the more frequent, taking up to seven people twice a month, and clients can choose to do the Chizarira half, the Hwange half or the lot. All the safaris have a back-up camp crew. John Milbank
Nearly a day's hard drive east of Victoria Falls, Chizarira (' barrier') takes its name from an escarpment overlooking the Zambezi Valley south of Lake Kariba. Its hills, vleis and gorges-- dominated by a 1,430 metre peak called Tundazi-- are home to a great variety of animals and birds. They're very shy of people, however, because the area is so remote and undeveloped and still subject to both subsistence and commercial poaching. In five days, we walked up on plenty of elephant and buffalo, but they quickly melted (in the case of elephant) or crashed away into the bush as soon as they detected us.
Much to my surprise, we heard both those orders on just the third day of the safari. We'd moved up towards a bull elephant on a ridge. He was big and battered, having lost the tip of his trunk to a poacher's snare years before, and was clearly unhappy about our presence. We stood silently watching for some minutes as he shuffled about the ridgetop, restlessly testing the air in our direction.
We found ourselves among what Leon estimated to be some 300 elephants, many with young, quietly browsing and grazing as they moved, like us, downriver towards the falls. They were all around us, unconcerned by our proximity except for a youngster who performed a token shuffle with trunk raised towards us before moving on. We parked on the river bank, watching about 40 elephants drink . We were entranced; it was one of those days when the sky and sunlight made the Zambezi an unexpected bright blue, wending its way between deep green riverine woodland towards sunburnt hills in the distance. Some curtain call!
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