Dan's Adventure

The Okavango Delta is one of the last true areas of wilderness in the world, a natural wetland system spreading over 1,600,000ha of northern Botswana and the only inland delta of its kind in the world.The traditional method of traversing the delta is to use a mokoro, a dugout canoe, which is poled through the long grasses, lilly pads and islands. Mokoros are made from the sausage tree, so named because it has large sausage shaped fruits hanging from its branches. It takes 80 years for the tree to grow to a suitable size, but a mokoro made from the tree will last 5 years at most, so fibre glass is now used to make mokoros that will last up to 10 years. Each mokoro fits two people comfortably along with luggage and a poler.

Rogers was to be my poler. We set off in his sausage tree mokoro, sitting very close to the water and wobbling from side to side as he poled. I didn’t want to question it as we had been advised previously that the polers would keep the mokoros steady. Ten minutes in and I could feel my behind getting wet. Looking over my shoulder I could see Rogers bailing out water from the mokoro. We were sinking. The Okavango Delta has all kinds of animals living in it, hippos in particular, so the thought of being stranded in the water was not something I wanted to contemplate. Another mokoro pulled up beside us and took the luggage and water containers from the mokoro which helped a bit, Cathy also abandoned ship at this stage, joining two others in the rescue mokoro. Rogers and I continued to an island where everyone else was waiting and I was moved into a fibre glass mokoro which hada lot more clearance from the water.

We spent almost three hours in the mokoros before reaching our destination, a small beach area which would be our campsite for the night. Although I had stayed in bush campsites at the Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti where it was unbounded meaning that animals could roam freely amongst the tents, those campsites did still have minimal facilities. Our campsite in the Okavango Delta was real bush camping. A hole for a toilet, a fire to cook on, and tents right on the beach. We arrived, tents were pitched, lunch eaten, and then it was our turn to have a shot at poling. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that those guys jobs are safe. Every single one of us that tried to pole went overboard. Its very difficult to maintain your balance and even more difficult to turn them or even to go in a straight line. Going in circles however is a piece of cake.

Until the Okavango Delta, all of our animal watching had been from vehicles within nature reserves, but in the Okavango Delta we set out on foot for a couple of bush walks, one early evening just before sunset, and another before breakfast the following morning. Our guides led us for a couple of hours over an area of a few kilometres where we sighted elephants, giraffes, zebra, wildebeest, springbok and an ostrich. Seeing animals such as these on foot rather than the comparitive safety of a vehicle was amazing. The guides followed animal tracks and droppings to determine where the animals were and how recently they had been there. Going to the Okavango Delta was definitely one of the highlights of my time in Africa, it was such a unique experience, completely different to everywhere else that I have been.