Okavango Delta: 23rd Aug 09

This morning we crossed the border back into Botswana and followed the Okavango river to the beginning of the delta.

The Okavango delta is one of the most unique eco-systems on the planet. The river flows from the Angolan mountains, through Namibia into the Kalahari desert in Botswana where it spreads out in a fan shape creating hundreds of kilometres of islands, swamps pools and inlets. The river is one of the few in the world that doesn’t reach the sea – it simply flows into the desert creating a fertile plain and then evaporates. We were met on the banks of the delta by the local villagers in their canoes.

Traditionally the canoes are hollowed out trees, but nowadays they’re made of fibre glass as they are lighter and don’t leak. We got into the canoes – 2 people per canoe with a ‘poler’ at the back and set off. It was lovely floating along amongst the reed beds and papyrus plants. This was termed a ‘canoe safari’ so as well as travelling to our campsite, we were on the look-out for animals. We saw some large elephants and several hippos.

Hippos are really dangerous – they kill more humans every year than all of the other ‘big 5’ put together, so you have to be very cautious approaching them in a boat. We arrived at our camp site on an island in the middle of the delta – it was a complete wilderness with no running water, electricity or toilets. If we wanted a poo we had to go behind a bush where they’d dug a hole. Nice. Oh, and there was elephant poo everywhere!

In the afternoon some of us went swimming on the delta. Despite there being crocodiles and hippos not far away, our local guides said it was safe. The water was freezing, but a nice relief as the weather was really hot (although this is a fertile delta, it is technically a desert!).

In the evening we went back out on the canoes in search of hippos – Matt and I were in the lead canoe and were passing through some reds when a massive hippo rose out of the water bout 3 metres in front of us. It let out a really loud grunt and sprayed water in the air. Our poler (who was the village chief, called Lovemore) managed to quickly back paddle us away onto another reed bed –a close shave, but good fun! We went on to watch a family of about 10 hippos wallowing in the water and then watched the sunset from our boats before heading back to the campsite for dinner around bonfire.