A safari cruise on Lake Kariba offers surprising delights

I’d always assumed the illustrations I’d seen in childhood were exaggerated—five or six iconic African species grouped in one scene. But a few days on safari across Botswana and Zimbabwe proved me wrong. At each stop along our journey, we encountered different mixes of wildlife: zebras, impalas, baboons, ostriches, wildebeests, and herd upon herd of elephants. And somehow this seemed like a bonus as we searched for—and successfully spotted—lions, cheetahs, and leopards.

In the midst of it all was a setting I hadn’t imagined.

Lake Kariba, formed more than a half century ago by the damming of the Zambezi River, is vast—wide enough for a boat to reach places where land vanishes on both sides. In the shallows along its shore, a haunting forest of lifeless trees, flooded and bare, juts from the water.

Yet incredible expressions of life are plentiful here, shaped by water’s abundance in a region otherwise defined by long, dry stretches between seasonal rains. The calls of African fish eagles and deep grunts of hippos replaced the hornbill chatter and rumble of elephants we’d heard on land. And from our unique vantage point on the deck of a liveaboard boat, we could watch wildlife approach the lake to drink.

One evening as the sun set over glass-still water, we glided in a pontoon boat through the skeletal forest, hippos bobbing as we passed. To our delight, we soon came upon a weathered, half-broken tree trunk cradling a green-back heron nest with three blue eggs. Our wildlife sightings that day alone could have filled a book, but in this landscape full of large and legendary species, that little nest supported by a long-dead tree may have been the most unexpected marvel of all.