Safari part 2 - Okavango Delta

It was now time to part ways with my first group and say goodbye to South Africa. I was a bit nervous about this part of the trip, cause someone from the safari company had mentioned that I may be alone with a guide for this part. Being by myself with a guide for the better part of a week would not be my idea of a good time, so I was greatly relieved when I met Susannah and Anders, a Danish couple who were doing the same trip through Botswana to Victoria Falls.

I was picked up at 6:15AM in a small 4-door car that would be our transportation for the next week or so. A bit suprising, since this was not my idea of a rough and tumble safari vehicle, but then again, this is Africa. Expect anything. The first couple of days were very quiet and entailed a lot (A LOT) of driving. Our guide David had said we'd be on the road for no less than 10 hours on the first day, and he wasn't wrong. Even if everything went smoothly at the border crossing into Botswana and the only traffic on the roads were animals of all sorts, we still managed to take close to 13 hours for the first leg of our trip. David, a very sweet man and good guide as well, has a method to his madness that only he understands. Let's just say our pit stops and shopping breaks were far from efficient and the concept of a 'critical path' was a foreign one. (Slap slap, listen to me going on about efficiency and critical paths. Have I not been traveling long enough?)

The first day ended with the 2nd vehicle accident of my trip (1st=bus in China), when our car hit a horse as it was crossing the road after sunset. So many animals were using the road as their own personal playground, it was just a matter of time before we hit something. Thankfully we were fine and the car was only slighly damaged, but who knows what happened to the horse, since we never stopped to check on it. It's just not done in this part of the world. Susannah mentioned that this was the 3rd time they'd been involved in an accident of the first days of their vacations. Good luck charms they were not! ;-)

The next day was more of the same, with more driving through the flat sandy landscape of Botswana. The scenery was pretty enough, but it honestly gets wearing hour after hour. By the time we got near our campsite for the day, I was almost at the 'Are we almost there?' stage but barely managed to keep it in check. And when our Toyota Corolla type 'safari' vehicle got caught in the sand in the 'driveway' to the campsite, I almost lost it. My newfound zen-like patience left me, big time. (PMS might have had something to do with it, but seriously, I was about ready to punch someone).

All this driving was to get us close to the real fun, the 2-day bush camping safari in the Okavango Delta. This would be 'extreme' camping for me, with no running water, no electricity, no toilets, ... Just getting there was half the adventure, with a 2-hour drive in an open truck, half of it 'off-road' on the sand and over waterways, followed by another 2-hour or so ride in a mokoro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makoro). The mokoro ride was amazingly beautiful. A poler stood at the back of the canoe and pushed us around the shallow waterways filled with reeds, water lillies, birds, butterflies, ... I don't think I've ever felt so far away from home than after that journey into the middle of the Delta.

Once at our camp (basically a shady area amongst the trees by the water), we set up our tents, had lunch and rested before our first afternoon gamewalk. It started off in an interesting way, with us witnessing a baboon murder/manslaughter. A younger male baboon was chasing an older male around the trees next to our camps, and the older one eventually ended up way high up in a tree, waiting the young guy out. The young one left and the older one decided to make a move, only to end up falling out of the tree from very high up above. Our guide walked us close to the baboon, who just managed to limp away and hide under some bushes. He was still there the next morning but wasn't in good shape. He wouldn't last more than a few days for sure. All this was witnessed with the greatest enjoyment by our guide, who laughed so hard at the baboon falling out of the tree I thought he'd pee himself. Obviously humour is subjective, but none of the rest of us thought it was funny. Go figure.

As usual, I was a bit worried at how I'd manage the game walks accompanied by much fitter people than I. I shouldn't have worried about the pace of the walk, you can't really race around when you're looking for animals (unless you're running away from them, I guess). I still managed to get blisters though, which hadn't happened in ages. All this because my feet were so dirty (seriously, who needs showers?) and got overheated wearing running shoes walking around in the sand. I wasn't too pleased, since we had another 4-hour walk planned the next day, but I'd survive. The walk was cool, with some zebra, giraffe and hippo sightings. It's definitely a different feeling to see the animals away from the comfort of a safari truck, with nothing between you and them but a bit of space. Cool.

The next morning's walk was a bit more of a struggle, my blisters becoming bigger by the minute. Walking was OK, but the minute we'd stop I'd feel the pain shoot up. And starting again was hell, I'd have to grit my teeth to get through the first 100 paces (trust me, I counted every step). In between my mentally cursing my stupid feet, I saw some more amazing animals, with giraffes and elephants again being the highlight for me. No lions or leopards, but honestly, who wants to come across these when you're WALKING. Not me, that's for sure.

The walks were much like the game drives, with lots of time to yourself to daydream and relax. At one point, I was so involved in my imaginary tale of being chased be an elephant, being pushed down by people running away screaming from the beast, that I almost stopped walking altogether. I 'came to' and started walking again, only to start mentally writting out my last will and testament, in case my daydream turned real. For the record, the gist of my will is that I love you all and if this is my time to go, well, what a way to do it! You'll have to trust me when I say it wasn't as morbid as it sounds...

That afternoon, we went on a sunset mokoro trip to a hippo pool nearby. It was extremely cool to watch hippos pop up and down in the water every few minutes. Hippos are supposedly the most dangerous animals in Africa, killing more humans than any other animal. During our game walks in St. Lucia, we were constantly reminded to always keep a barrier of some sort between us and the hippos, being a trench, trees or a very good distance. This time, not so many warnings and our polers brought us close to the hippos in the water. It was thrilling, maybe a bit too thrilling...

I was calmly sitting in my mokoro while my poler was edging us closer to a group of hippos, all to get a better view of them. All of a sudden, the mokoro starts wobbling and moving around like crazy as we flip directions and head for the shore. Now this a tiny bit unnerving cause it felt like we were going to tip (mokoros don't feel all that stable in the first place), so I turn around to look at my poler and ask him what the hell was going on. He was laughing, so I assumed it was just a bit of fun on his part (must be fun to scare the tourists every once in a while), but then I saw Susannah looking at me all worried. She asked me if I was OK, and was I shaking as much as she was? It turns out that a hippo charged my mokoro and I didn't even see it! We came too close and it decided to show us who's boss, but I guess it was all a bit beyond me. My closest call with Africa's most dangerous animal, and I missed it!!!

There was more hippo action that night, while I was lying in my tent trying to go to sleep. I kept hearing some chomping and splashing very nearby, just on the shore next to our tents. I heard the guys outside saying that it was a hippo, but being the closest tent to the shore and already having had one close call that day, I decided to stay put in my tent and wait the hippo out. I fell asleep shortly and awoke the next day alive and well, so it all turned out great in the end :-)

The Okavango Delta was an overall amazing experience, the closest I've felt to nature and being 'in the wild'. Living up close with elephants, zebras, giraffes, hippos, ... is probably not something I'm going to get to do that often in my lifetime, so I won't soon forget it.