On the Limpopo River


Here it is in front of us – the famous Limpopo… There is such a river, everyone knows from the first class: “And Aibolit stood up, Aibolit ran… And only the word says Aibolit:” Limpopo, Limpopo, Limpopo! “Someone, even after having tasted the fruits of geography, believes that the main river in Africa is Limpopo, the impressions of childhood are so strong, the fairy tale of Chukovsky’s root crop is so good-as Chukovsky was called in the cartoon.

Limpopo is a small river. There are in Africa the Nile, the Congo, the Zambezi. But generally there are few rivers on the continent. Often you see only a dry sandy bed. Water in the river appears only in the rainy seasons, and soon after them, the African sun drank water to the sandy bottom. Some rivers, making their way to the ocean, are losing power in the deserts. It is interesting to see on the map: the blue vein stretches to the sea, but disappears on the yellow space. Here and there little

streams flow along the steppes. From the sun they are saved by a green forest. But, in addition to the sun, pumping stations drink water from rivers, and often only behind the scenes of greenery is a sleepy, thin stream, to which all living things go to secret places to get drunk.

We once crossed such a small river called Crocodile. And so, tracing the blue vein on the map, we find out: it was Limpopo, only the name in the upper reaches is different.

We go to the river, around the tropical forest. Seventy kilometers through thickets, dark and gloomy. And here it is – Limpopo. The water flashed, but it still needs to be reached from the road. We wade through the barriers of thorns, in each lying on the ground we suspect a snake.

The snakes did not see. A crocodile from the sand in front of us quickly wept and disappeared into the water. Hello, Limpopo! For a minute silently we look at the water of the color of a ripe mandarine, on dense thickets on the other bank, on the bank, where the “hippopotamus” can walk, and then suddenly, like children, jump and start cheerfully mourning and fooling around. When the childhood in us calmed down, began to try on the river. It can be seen: shallow. The width is about thirty meters, well, like the Moscow River near Zvenigorod. The opposite bank is already Botswana, because Limpopo is a border river. We were promised a barbed wire on the shore and machine-gunners in green. But, except for the crocodile, which showed from the orange water a dorsal crest, eyes and nostrils, nothing dangerous to see.


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On the Limpopo River