BotswanaOkavangoDelta

Our main event in Botswana was to visit the Okavango Delta, the natural highlight of the country. It is a river of grass similar to Florida's Everglades with the addition of hippos, elephants, lions, giraffes and crocs. It is the world's largest inland delta and part of a 1300 kilometer river.

The city of Maun is our last stop before the campground and our bush camp in the Okavango Delta. Maun is the closest city on the edge of the delta becoming a busy place offering tourist amenities and an organizing point for trips into the delta. We stopped for the bank/exchange and grocery. They do not take Namibian dollars in Botswana and will only accept pulas. After exchanging money, we went promptly to the store to purchase snacks and meat to supplement our rather uninspired meals on the African Routes bus. It is definitely the little things that get you through each day when roughing it. Our campground was the Audi Camp, one of several in the area. We arrived midday in the heat of the African sun. Dizzi set up lunch while we set up camp in a deserted looking location. A little later, Dylan thought something was amiss and we discovered that there was no water in the bathrooms. Dylan takes off on foot to find the campground manager and returns thirty minutes later with a small pickup truck. Dylan informs us this camp has been closed and we have to move to the main camp about 1 kilometer away. Not what you want to hear when you have already pitched your tent and unpacked your stuff. I must say everyone stayed in good spirits and packed up in record time. The main camp at Audi campgrounds was where the action was. They had a swimming pool, bar, and lots of people in rugged terrain vehicles coming and going.

After setting up the tent again, I went for a cold shower to escape the heat of the day. Scooter figured the bar would be a good place to hide. We had the rest of the afternoon and evening to relax. Dylan went out of his way today to drive Sam, a fellow overlander to town so she could confirm flight reservations for her trip to Uganda. She is hoping to see the mountain gorillas. The girls wanted to go shopping for the famous Botswana baskets and Dylan again drove us to a women's co-op selling local crafts. Audi Camp is a major organizer of Okavango Delta trips and we depart tomorrow.

After dinner of vegetarian chili and cheese over rice we retire to the bar for a game of Trivial Pursuit- the South African version. It was quite interesting to play in multinational teams, with each person bringing knowledge from their own country. The game went on for a couple of hours with the winners being Sico, Jan and me.

The next morning we would be one of the last groups to depart for the delta which meant we could sleep in until 7:30 AM for a 9:00 AM departure time. However, it is difficult to sleep in when the rest of the camp is up at 5:30 AM packing up gear. We would spend 36 hours in the delta and for the most part would be roughing it, no shower and no toilets. At 9:00 AM a large all-terrain vehicle and trailer pulls into camp. This will be our ride to the delta. We will be traveling in the delta by small canoes called mokoros and are to bring only a day pack with us, a change of clothes and drinking water.

When we pulled off the main road we discovered the need for the all-terrain vehicle -- it was a really bumpy ride through soft sand to the edge of the national park. The area surrounding the delta has become a vast wasteland of sand and brush from the over use as pasture land for cows and goats. The delta is trying to hang on as a nature preserve but the locals want to convert the green grasses to pasture land for grazing. They only need to look at what they have done to the surrounding areas to realize they will destroy the delta. We are dropped off at a small river and greeted by the mokoro polers and their families. The tourist industry represents a good way to make a living and they are happy to see us. They helped unload gear and somehow went about the process of choosing passengers. The boats, if you can call them that are carved out of a single log and the bottom is filled with grass reeds. Some of the boats are nicer than others which means some people had to sit in water from a leaking boat and others didn't. Our mokoro poler's name was L.T. and he built a fine boat that kept us high and dry. The canoes are carved out of the log of sausage trees and take about one month to complete.



Each boat is loaded with two people, the gear and the poler. With a full load the mokoro sits only an inch or two from the surface of the water. The polers all come from a local village and have formed their own company, The Okavango Polers Trust; it seems to be run very efficiently. L.T. poled for about thirty minutes before we all went ashore for a nature hike. We walked a couple hundred yards into a tree hammock in search of elephants. We had a group of 18 tourists who had been warned that what we were doing was very dangerous and we needed to be as quiet as possible. Scooter and I had been on a couple of game walks before so we took it seriously. The big difference now was that our current guide did not have a gun for our protection. We spotted a large bull elephant hanging out in the shade of the trees. We are probably 100 feet from him and everyone is taking pictures, talking, and moving around. If I was a big elephant trying to take a nap in the heat of the day and a bunch of tourists kept making noise, you know what I would do, Charge! Our friend the elephant came after us and we are all in a life or death situation. The guidebooks say to slowly move away from an elephant and try not to startle him. It doesn't say anything about what to do when the elephant is running towards you. When we see the guides bolt in to a full run we knew what to do, Run! Scooter was quick to catch on and managed to keep his wits about him because as he ran he captured the spectacle on video. It looks like we are all extras in a Godzilla movie. We ran back to the water's edge and jumped in our boats. Luckily, the elephant had achieved his goal of being able to return to his nap because he did not follow us to the water. Jan was so scared that she ran out of her shoes and none of the guides wanted to return for them. It was fortunate that no one had been hurt. Elephants are the king of the jungle and have no problem killing anything that pisses them off. We felt safe back in our boats even though an elephant would have no problem chasing us down because we are in his favorite water hole. It turns out that the elephants are not the real danger. the hippos kill the most humans in Africa. They are not to be approached or startled because they attack. We are currently poling our boat through hippo country.

We spend the next hour traveling along the narrow and shallow streams of the delta. We stop occasionally to watch elephants on the shore and even take a swim. I am not sure what possessed me to go for a swim in the muddy waters of the delta but it was refreshing. That night I combed mud out of my hair for an hour. Lunch was a picnic under a large shade tree, we hung out for an hour watching elephants and just taking in the landscape of the grasslands. We really wanted to see some hippos and crocs but never got close enough for any good pictures. This is probably a good thing. We arrived at our camp for the night to find another elephant had taken up residence. A couple of guides went ashore to try and scare him off. Elephants don't scare very easily. The guides had to start a fire in the brush to get him to leave. Elephants don't like fire and we all setup camp as the grasslands around us burned.

We loaded up in the boats around 6:00 PM for another game walk hoping we would see hippo's. We came across more elephants and this time everyone was as quiet as a mouse. It was starting to get dark which means hippo's start coming out of the water for a night time of grazing. They spend their days in the water sleeping and the nights on land eating. We didn't want to get caught by a hippo so we had to head back to camp. We missed our safety window by a couple of minutes because half way back to camp a huge hippo came out of the water in front of Mark and Jan's mokoro. We only got to see his rear-end as he walked on shore and, man, are those guys huge. It is now almost completely dark and we are still on the water but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. It is quiet but everything around you is waking up. At any moment the peace and calm can change by an elephant coming to the water for a drink or a huge hippo deciding he is hungry for grass and you are in his way. Sico and Petra from Holland got fairly unlucky in their boat selection because it leaked the entire day. Spending the afternoon walking around in wet underwear is not fun. Well, you know what happens to leaking boats they eventually sink. It is dark, we are in the middle of the delta and all we hear is a loud commotion behind us and a lot of cussing in Dutch. Sico and Petra's boat sank taking all passengers with it. You, of course, can stand up because the water is only two feet deep but talk about not fun. They managed to save their cameras but it is dark and they are standing waste deep in water and mud. They got their money's worth on this trip.

Back at camp Dizzy was cooking baked potatoes, salad, and boawars (sausages), and for the vegetarian a stuffed green pepper. It was so dark that without the campfire or flashlight you couldn't see two inches in front of your face. We set up a ground cloth around the fire and started to settle in before dinner. Just before sitting down, a red thick liquid start dripping on the ground cloth from the overhead tree. We all thought a leopard had killed an animal and placed in the tree overhead. The locals pointed it out that it was only a bat dropping guano- lovely! Dinner was excellent and we went to bed early since there was nothing else to do. We heard wild animal noises all night.

Yep, we were ready to go. This must be one of easiest places in the world to get dirty. Sico and Petra had the added bonus of wet shoes and muddy clothes. Before we depart back to civilization we go on a two hour morning game viewing. If you do not see any game it makes for a very long two hours. We did manage to find a couple of giraffes and elephants in the distance. All I could think about was a shower. I could not wait to return to the bush camp. I could not wait for the all-terrain pick-up truck. I could not wait to get back to Audi camp. I could not wait to take a shower! I am glad we only spent one night in the Delta but it was worth it. I have seen so many Discovery channel specials on the Okavango Delta and now I know what it is like first hand.

Next stop is Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. I am very excited about Victoria Falls because Scooter and I are going to try and get married!