Over breakfast at Busanga Plains Tented Camp in Kafue National Park, I mentioned a fascination with Cape buffalo (the world's meanest cattle) to Justin Matterson, director of the camp's parent company, Chilongozi Safaris. Matterson, an expat Brit, came to Africa in 1995 on a three-month contract for a youth charity, and stayed on to canoe the entire length of the Zambezi. Then he went to work for Chilongozi. As I talked about the Cape buffalo, he listened for a bit, then plopped his slouch hat on his head and said, "Right, let's go."

Collaring another guest, we piled into the Land Rover and roared off, past herds of roan antelope and puku, under baobab trees and circling vultures, to where the last of the forest clumps gave way to limitless plain. We stopped and scanned the horizon with binoculars, spotting a family of warthogs and a secretary bird. We drove on for another mile or two, took another look... and there they were. Three hundred Cape buffalo moving like a vast black amoeba over the grass. We idled the Land Rover as close as we dared and watched for an hour, eyed in return by three massive bulls on flanking guard duty.

Matterson delivers this what's-your-pleasure game viewing with nonchalant elán. In a way, Kafue makes it too easy: Each year, the Lufupa River floods the plains of Kafue, rendering them an impassable morass. When the river recedes, the plains explode in tall grass, attracting thousands of grazing animals—as well as the cats that dine on them.

Nor is there any shortage of dazzling fowl. As I was packing to meet the Cessna, a lilac-breasted roller flew down and perched in front of my tent, its iridescent purple, green, and sky-blue feathers flashing in the early sun like a necklace of mixed jewels. I held my breath until it flew up and vanished over the grass.

LOWER ZAMBEZI NATIONAL PARK

Fish eagles had just begun calling when we lowered three canoes into the Chifungulu Channel. It was dawn at Sausage Tree Camp, and my first sight of the place after flying in late the previous evening from Kafue. We planned an all-day paddle—a rafting safari—down the Zambezi.

If the nodders in our party weren't awakened by the sight of crocodiles sliding into the water at our approach, they certainly were when we surprised a three-foot monitor lizard perched on a high overhanging branch. It misstepped making its getaway and performed a spectacular cartwheeling plunge into the water between our canoes. Mike, our guide, seemed unconcerned by crocs and somersaulting lizards, but hippos—hippos are another matter—so he stayed in the lead to keep an eye on them.

The first 30 or so hippos we encountered merely glared at us before grudgingly moving aside, but we soon met our match, a quintet arrayed in phalanx across the channel, blowing and puff-ing and absolutely refusing to budge. We landed upstream and portaged the heavy Fiberglass canoes past the group while they snorted, perhaps in amusement. (Later I heard that one of the guides, on a solo canoeing outing, tried to bluff his way past these same five hippos. Afterward, he swam to shore unscathed and recovered both halves of his canoe downstream.)

A ponga—a no-frills, v-bottom motor boat—collected us at dusk and took us back up the channel in the dark. We were guided as we went by millions of fireflies whose flashing marked the banks like landing lights on an airstrip. The camp greeted us with the surreal vision of a linen-covered dining table set on the bank, aglow in candlelight and sparkling crystal. As the Southern Cross slid toward the western horizon, I fell asleep to the sound of lions calling back and forth across the channel.  

Correspondent Jonathan Hanson reviewed sea kayaks in the March issue of Outside.