Okavango Delta

By Zach and Elise. 

Of all the things we do in Africa, the mokoro trip into the Okavango Delta will remain one of our most special memories. So much of the safari and wildlife experience in Africa involves a vehicle, or a viewing platform, a bunker or a fence. These things allow you to get incredibly close to wildlife and take some fantastic photo's but there is something artificial about the experience. It's safe. But the experience of canoeing into the delta, and then trekking through grass and scrub behind our guide to emerge ten metres away from a herd of Zebra who have all stopped dead to stare at us was something else.

At the edge of the delta is a small village where you can hire a guide, or "poler" as they are called, who will take you into the Okavango in a traditional dug-out canoe. Ok, it's a traditional fibre glass canoe these days but you can't blame the guys, who have to push you and all your gear three hours into the delta, for swapping their old wood boats for something lighter. When we get there are several vehicles offloading tourists and the first boats get on the water quickly and head off up the river. Almost immediately they are turning around and returning to shore as a herd of elephants emerge from the trees and head to the water for a drink, blocking the road. Tourists quickly pile out of their canoes and get their camera's out. On the other side of the river a lone male elephant appears, also heading for the water but when he rounds the edge of the trees and sees the herd he stops dead. After a moment he slowly backs away and returns to the trees. It seems that etiquette dictates the ladies have right of way.

The elephants eventually move on and we meet our guides, Andrew and Chix. Both are local men who live in the many villages throughout the delta. As stated in the previous post we have hooked up with a Dutch couple that just finished a year working in Ethiopia and are backpacking with a tent like us. We pack all our stuff, including camping gear and food, are told to keep our hands in boat in case of hippos or crocodiles, and head off.

The boats sit about 5 inches out of water, which occasionally laps into the mokoro, so you sit very low and feel a part of the river life. The landscape is low and flat so we get only glimpses through the reeds from the mokoro. Lots of grassland and low scrub scattered with clumps of trees and occasional baobabs dominating the skyline. We carve our way through lilies, pink and blue. Can't remember entirely but it was something like the blue flowers open with the moon and pink flowers open with the sun, and being early we had both colours in the stages of opening and closing. On the way to our camp we see leopard frogs, all sorts of bird life, and a grass fire. The last is apparently common and we pass burnt out patches here and there along the way.  Eventually we pull up at a "hippo highway" (the flattened paths left by the hippo's nightly departure from the water) and set up camp maybe fifty metres away from the river under some trees.

We take a rest from the midday sun, and eat some lunch before heading out on a walking safari. Andrew has been working in the delta for twenty years. He is a wealth of knowledge and just seems to know where the animals will be. He leads us across grass plains and through scrub. We see a large herd of zebra and wildebeest grazing together. Andrew explains that one has excellent eyesight and the other excellent hearing so they often travel together for better chance of spotting predators. We pass an empty watering hole with no animals but Andrew spots some lion droppings, which may explain the lack of wildlife. He shows us "sausage trees" and baobabs and explains which animals rely on them for food. Most of the baobabs are missing large sections of bark, which the elephants have scraped off with their tusks to eat. We find the skin of a large snake but not much more in the way of wildlife.

After walking the plains, we come to a lagoon with a family of hippopotamuses. Every so often they emerge from diving throwing water in the air. There are grunting noises echoing around the pool. We watch the sunset and the hippo's wait in the water for the light to fade before they emerge from the water to forage for food on the land at night. After the pool we catch a lone red deer, only for a moment as she only pauses for a moment before sprinting off at the sight of us.

We follow Andrew through the dusk back to camp, grateful he knows the way as we would have no hope finding it on our own in this light. Back at camp we cook up dinner and chat around the fire, swapping stories. Andrew tells us some local fables involving zebras who marry crocodiles and clever rabbits. A lot is lost in the translation but it's fun listening and trying to decipher the meanings of the stories.

Before going to bed our guides warn us not to get up during the night as animals may pass by or even through the camp. Thinking this is mostly precautionary we don't worry too much and turn in. At some point in the early morning I wake and automatically get up to go to the bathroom, only to be stopped by a very awake Elise who has being trying to discern the noises outside our tent. There is an elephant growling somewhere nearby, and something walking through the campsite, which Andrew later tells us was a hippo. We grab a couple more hours’ sleep and wait until the sun is well and truly up before we stick our heads out.

A quick breakfast is followed by another walking safari. Almost straight away we come across a family of elephants crossing a clearing in front of us. The mothers are shielding their babies and we are told to stay on alert, as they are very protective of their young. They cover the clearing in very little time, with the little ones basically running to keep up with their mumma's. It’s such a privilege to see these beautiful majestic creatures in the wild and very moving.

Further on we see a large herd of antelope, a tower of giraffes, another family of elephants, more wildebeest and zebra and a large dark shadow a couple hundred metres away. I don't think any of us would have even seen it if Andrew hadn't pointed it out and then told us we needed to head in the other direction. A lone buffalo slowly took shape as it grazed it's way out of the scrub. Andrew started to get a little more edgy, the only time we saw him worried on the trip. He leads us a couple hundred metres the opposite direction to a patch of trees and told us we could watch from here but if it charged we had to climb the trees. Turning around we saw the buffalo had already reached the spot we were standing a few minutes before. Fortunately, he did not seem to be following us, just meandering as he grazed, and turned away without us needing to take to the trees. 

The rest of the day was fairly relaxed (for us, the polers had to push us back to the village) except for one moment on the ride back. Elise turned her head to the side and said, "Hippo!" two metres away was a hippo, sleeping in the reeds. Normally all the hippo's rest in the pools and lagoons during the day, but this one had decided to nap in the river. The night before Andrew had told us about a time he didn't notice a hippo and it had flipped his mokoro and the occupants into the water, biting one of them before swimming off. No one was killed and he tells it as a funny story now but we definitely kept a close eye on the reeds after that.

The mokoro couldn't take us as far into the delta as we might have liked but we loved what we did see and Andrew showed us the landscape and wildlife in a way that hasn't been matched yet. We really appreciate how close to the animals you can get on foot or in boat. The lack of fences in Botswana as a whole, but especially in the Okavango, makes for a legit adventure. The mokoro trip was definitely a highlight of our time in Botswana and Africa as a whole.