Currently the only river ship to cruise both the Chobe and Zambezi rivers, Croisi’s new vessel was built in Zimbabwe’s Harare shipyard and it took her nearly a year to make the 621-mile journey to her Kasane homeport. Elegant as an old colonial mansion, the all-suite ship has stylish bedrooms with zebra-striped bedspreads and African-themed decor, and the goodsized bathrooms come with rain showers. Picture windows give magnificent views of the surrounding Lake Kariba – at 139 miles long, the world’s largest manmade body of water (created when the Zambezi River was dammed to provide Zimbabwe with electricity). A warm welcome from the ship’s crew is followed by the first in a succession of leisurely dinners, served in the ship’s glass-walled restaurant: tilapia fish from the lake, in a tangy lemon sauce,with a well-stocked cheeseboard and crème brûléefor dessert, served with an excellent bottle of South African wine. The following day we head out in small boats for our first water safari on the Gache Gache River. At its remote estuary in the eastern part of the lake, the Gache Gache is home to a huge diversity of wildlife. Our boat cuts through still waters where fishermen cast lines to catch enormous tiger fish, and on past petrified tree trunks where African darter birds stretch their wings to dry in the sun. Serenaded by a hundred wails, warbles and whistles, we slide into a small creek, hedged by butterfly-leaved mopane trees. Above us are lumpybeaked trumpeter hornbills, while vivid Malachite kingfishers flash back and forth above a pod of wallowing hippos. Our guide, Sam, tells us that these deceptively cute-looking beasts can be extremely aggressive. “Statistics show that hippos kill more people in Africa than any other animal”, he warns, as we head back to the African Dream for dinner.
