Into the Delta

As I write this blog, I am in my tent and can hear an elephant just outside my tent. He's been at the camp all evening shaking palm nuts out of the trees. Hippos are grunting all around; lions occasionally growl. From time to time our tent platform shakes, but we're not sure why. The conversation at the fire tonight at one point was, "that's a hippo" or "that's a lion" or "that's an elephant crossing the water to come onto this island." It was too dark to see, but we were discussing the sounds we were hearing.

We arrived in Maun, Botswana on Friday (7/23) from Windhoek. There is no direct bus or anything, so we opted for a more expensive transport in a car instead of the other option of bus out of Windhoek to a town a few hours from the border where you then have to hitch over the border, then can catch another few buses. I wasn't too keen on that (this is obviously Katie writing right now). We got to Maun with relative ease, although our car did break down just before the border. We were in a newish VW with a computerized engine and it was kind of entertaining watching four car mechanics and anyone else who wandered by stare at the engine. I knew we weren't getting to Maun in the car we started in, especially when I knew more about how to jack a car up than the mechanics, and I've never actually even done that before. Luckily, another car with the transport company was returning from Maun, and the timing was great, so we switched cars. This delay of about 1.5 hours put us far enough behind schedule that with about 100km to go, it had gotten dark. The road and roadsides were covered with open range livestock, so we were reduced to crawling along making sure not to hit any animals; all animals in Botswana have the legal right-of-way. We made the last turn off the main road to our lodging and suddenly were on a car-width dirt track, with water on both sides. It continued like this for about 100 yards before we went up a small rise and into the Old Bridge Backpackers. It seemed like we had suddenly entered the Mississippi Delta, having driven from west Texas.

The Old Bridge Backpackers was one of the first backpackers places in Maun, the jumping off point for trips into the Okavango Delta. According to the "old timers" Maun really used to be quite the frontier; I still thought it was. The bar at The Old Bridge was full of a cast of characters from bush pilots, locals, and travelers from all over. We spent two nights and one day there, before we headed into the Delta.

The Okavango Delta is formed when the Okavango river, with its headwaters in Angola, reaches the flatlands of the Kalahari. Here in the dry Kalahari, the Okavango river ends, never reaching the sea, just evaporating and soaking into the soil. In the process it fans out into a maze of channels, forming a wetland that varies in size from about 9,000 square km at low water to about 16,000 during a normal flood; this year is the highest flood in close to 50 years and the area is about 19,000 sq km. As a result of the strain the high flood is putting on the wastewater system in Maun, the official policy in the bathrooms of the Old Bridge Backpackers is 'If it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down.' I should note that we are actually in the dry season here; wet season is January-March or so, as it is at the source of the river. The water just takes that long to get from the source due to the flat terrain. The Okavango floods are exacerbated by the fact that the rainy season here was also particularly rainy this year.

Our morning today started with a flight over the delta in a very small plane where Tom and I were the only passengers and I got to sit up front next to the pilot.

It was a short, but very cool, flight. I saw elephants, Tom saw elephants and hippos.

Just before we landed at the camp's rolling dirt airstrip, baboons cleared the runway for us.

We are at Oddballs camp, which is like a little paradise in the middle of nowhere. It is a beautiful camp where everyone is super friendly, and they feed you extremely well. We had a hot breakfast shortly after arriving, then we relaxed and read for a bit, then we had a hot lunch, then we went for our first mokoro ride. A mokoro is traditional canoe carved out of a tree trunk propelled by a poler who pushes against the bottom of the river with a stick.

After all those meals, I wanted to help, but just sat there as our guide pushed us though the water and tall grasses. We couldn't follow the main channel of the river here as there is too great a hippo risk. Instead we made our way through increasingly narrow channels through the high marsh grasses and eventually right over the march grasses.

We were covered in all sorts of exotic insects, but this gives you the benefit of seeing any underwater hippo disturbing the grasses. We were making our way to the "Hippo Pool," a place known to be a favorite spot of the hippos. Sure enough, they were there,

but I was a bit nervous (still Katie here, Tom doesn't seem to get nervous) because I know that hippos are very very territorial. However, I learned from our guide that hippos can't climb (shocking), so if I was to be chased by a hippo, simply climb a termite mound or a tree, and all will be fine. Hmmm. Aside from a few nerves, our first mokoro trip was really beautiful and interesting.

After arriving back at camp, relaxing a bit more and enjoying a cold beer as we watched the sun go down,

we had another really good meal. We were joined for dinner by the camp manager (KT) and a French couple celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary. We shared some travel and animal stories, and tried to get the scary lion stories out of KT.

Tomorrow (7/26) we head out for three nights of camping in the bush. Tom couldn't be more thrilled. I honestly am a bit nervous. Our guide knows the bush really well and his grandfather was an actual bushman, so I am putting my faith in him. Hopefully I wont get attacked by a hippo or eaten by a lion and will live to write a blog about how cool it was... ;)