Lake Kariba
Kariba Recreational Park contains one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, created by a hydroelectric dam built to provide power to both Zimbabwe and Zambia. Kariba is one of Zimbabwe’s greatest water playgrounds with special luxury houseboats, speedboats and yachts.
The lake has a surface area of 5,000 square kilometres and a maximum depth of 116 metres. It extends to a length of 282 kilometres with an average width of about 32 kilometres. The dam wall took more than one million cubic metres of concrete and stands 128 metres high. The crest of the wall is 617 metres long. The dam was built by an Italian consortium and at the time of completion in 1959 it was the largest dam in the world. A road across the top of the dam links Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The building of the Kariba Dam was surrounded by controversy, both environmentally due to the impact on the ecology of the region and socially. In social terms, it is alleged the construction upset the river god Nyaminyami the legendary serpentine god of the Tonga people - the original inhabitants of the Zambezi valley. In addition, as the lake filled up many animals kept moving up to higher ground and were trapped by the water. Rupert Fothergill, the first warden of the Matusadona National Park, pioneered a very successful rescue programme called Operation Noah, which saved hundreds of animals from drowning. In the early 1960s a worldwide campaign was launched to collect ladies stockings which were then used to tie the legs of antelope to avoid bruising during re-location.
Despite this, the dam is an impressive monument to man’s engineering expertise. The Zambezi valley, which now forms Lake Kariba, has survived with most plant and animal species having adapted to the changed conditions.
Kariba now supports a successful fishing industry and the annual Tiger International Tournament is held here, drawing fishermen from all over the world to pit their wits against the cunning and fighting tiger fish. The main fish in the lake is kapenta, or the Lake Tanganyika sardine, which was introduced here in the early 1960s from Zambia.
There is considerable wildlife on the banks of the lake including elephant, buffalo, crocodile, impala and common waterbuck. The adjoining national park, Matusadona, has the highest concentration of lion per square kilometre of any park in Africa and is the best place in Zimbabwe to track black rhino on foot. Prolific bird life includes the goliath and grey herons, white egrets, fish eagles, cormorants and open-billed storks. The bleached trunks and branches of the fossilised trees drowned by the flooding of the lake present a stunning foreground to amazing sunsets.
Perhaps the best way of experiencing Lake Kariba is to spend a few days drifting along her shores on a houseboat, providing opportunities for fishing, game viewing from the boat or walking on the game filled shores. The Sanyati Gorge, a scenic channel that breaks into the Matusadona Mountain Range, is popular with fishermen and birders.
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Chizarira National Park