Lake Kariba — Where Africa’s Largest Sky Sits on Water

Lake Kariba is the largest man-made lake on Earth by volume. It was created in 1959 when the Kariba dam wall was finished and the Zambezi river was held. Two thousand square miles of water, 220 kilometres long, on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. It is the single largest piece of inland water in southern Africa.

The flooding drowned a forest. The dead trees still stand in the shallows — pale, polished, sticking out of the water. Cormorants nest in the tops. Fish eagles call from them. African skimmers, the rarest of the river birds, work the surface at dusk. Light is the thing here. Whatever you have read about African sunsets, Kariba writes a line below them.

What to do, ranked

1. Go on a houseboat for three nights. The lake is best inhabited slowly. We charter small houseboats with an experienced captain and a guide who knows the wildlife along the shoreline. Hippos at every dawn. Elephants drinking. Crocodiles too big to photograph at one go. Lake Kariba Houseboat Safari is the canonical version.

2. Combine the lake with Matusadona. The national park on the southern shore is one of the few places in southern Africa where you can track black rhino on foot, with armed rangers, and the experience is as remote as it gets in this country. Matusadona & Lake Kariba Wilderness — five days, boat-based, black-rhino tracking included.

3. Catch a tigerfish. Tigerfish are the piranhas of Africa — fast, aggressive, spectacularly acrobatic when they take a lure. Kariba is one of the world’s top tigerfish destinations. Tiger Fishing at Lake Kariba — three nights, dedicated guide, tagged release.

When to go

April to November. The dry months bring wildlife to the shoreline; the lake is at its most photographed. December to March is the green season — the lake is fuller, the bush is on fire with new growth, and the storms across the water at dusk are the kind of weather you remember.

Plan a Kariba journey.

— Josh