Delta Blues

Hello again, my friends. Back to Botswana, and the day we headed into the Okavango Delta:

Well, the day started on a bit of a surreal note, as I arrived by the truck for breakfast to hear Paul conversing with Valdy. The latter, however, was not to be seen. At first, I assumed he was the other side of the truck, and his voice was carrying through the open storage lockers. In fact, the explanation turned out to be rather more straightforward: Valdy was underneath the truck. To be more precise, Valdy had slept underneath the truck. Having failed, for once, in his efforts to get friendly with a young lady (not from our truck) the previous night, he had apparently realised that he had no idea where Paul had pitched their tent, and so had elected to sleep underneath his trusty White Nile!

Anyways, humorous episodes involving Valdy aside, we had to break camp yet again, as we were taking our own tents, mats, sleeping bags etc for our little overnight jaunt into the Delta. This was pretty well automated by now, even for the new guys who had only joined us in Livi, so we were all ready when the time came to pile onto yet another truck to head out to the mokoro launching point. Due to the early morning chill, I was very glad that I had brought along my trusty blanket, which I had acquired for the princely sum of 2 quid at the PEP store in Kasane (PEP is a kind of cheap clothing store in South Africa, which also has branches in Namibia and Botswana - I had also finally succeeded in my long-running sandals quest there!), even if it did have a slightly unfortunate habit of molting on me!

Our arrival at the mokoro launch point was unfortunately something of an exercise in chaos - there seemed little or no rhyme or reason in the way pairs of us were allocated to mokoros or their polers, with some pairs of light people placed in the high-sided fibreglass boats whilst heavier people ended up in the older, shallower wooden boats. As you can probably tell, Jon and I ended up in a wooden one, which promptly started shipping water over the gunwale amidships (largely because the cross-breeze through the delta was whipping up a low swell), getting Jon soaking wet and quite upset!

From this point on, matters ranged from the mundane to the farcical, as Jon and I ended up being dropped off on a mudbank while our canoe (and poler) was taken back and swapped. This helped matters slightly, but we were still dealing with quite a lot of spillage into the bottom of our mokoro, which was soaking the ground-mats (on which we were sat). And we were some of the luckier ones. Tony and Stacy (the Kiwi couple who'd been on the truck since Uganda_ were going along with only about 1cm of freeboard above the waterline (we had maybe 3cm...) and Stacy was lying flat out in a "luge" position, trying not to think about dropping into the water. Roger and Chiara (the Canadian couple who joined us in Livi off the Jo'burg truck) had also had to be swapped out, as had Dave (London wideboy) and Amanda (American lass), two more of the Jo'burg brigade.

The worst fortune, though, was reserved for Brandon and Matt, the two American lads who'd joined up with the truck to start with in Livi - their mokoro sank. Twice. Apparently the first time the water started coming in on Matt, who was sat in the middle of the boat, and they just slowly subsided. After this, their bags were transferred into another boat, and they headed off again. Only for, a few minutes later, the prow of the boat to disappear into the water (leading with Brandon's feet), and another impression of a submarine to begin. At this point, the polers decided to transfer the boys into one of the fibreglass mokoros, to ensure their safe arrival at the campsite. So, what did they transfer into probably the most un-sea-worthy vessel in the fleet? Our tents. One of which apparently fell in the water during the transfer. Which later turned out to be Matt and Brandon's tent. Honestly, you just couldn't make this kind of thing up.

By the time we arrived at our campsite for the night, it was to find that many of the tents were at least damp, and about 3/4 of the ground-mats were somewhere between soggy and totally sodden. Admittedly, it was still only early afternoon, so we laid these out to dry, along with various sleeping bags (mine included) which had also got slightly closer to the delta than intended. Feeling mildly disgruntled at all this, we then headed off on game-walks with some of the polers. These were, it must be admitted, more than a touch disappointing for many of us. The game appeared to have all decided to hide for the day, such that we saw a couple of antelope and a brace of warthog (all at a distance) and that was about it. Apart from all the poo - our guides were, in fact, very good at pointing out and describing the dung of the absent creatures.

As you can most likely tell, I wasn't really that bowled over by our little adventure in the Delta, although it was partly salvaged by a gorgeous night-time vista of the southern skies. Quite a few of us, either prompted by a sense of adventure or by a wet mat or tent, ended up sleeping out around the campfire, in the company of our polers. Unfortunately, either they or Valdy turned out to be responsible for some pretty energetic snoring and this, combined with a biting cold wind, served to severely restrict my ability to sleep. So much so, that I had only had about an hour or so when dawn came around and people were getting up for another game walk. Dispirited by the previous day's anticlimax, and seriously knackered, I decided to opt out of this and get another couple of hours' sleep.

Soon enough, though, it was time to get up, eat some breakfast and reload the mokoros for the trip back through the delta. Having evidently learned something from the previous day's misadventures, this time all the heavy people, along with the cameras and other things sensitive to water (Brandon having seen his MP3 player ruined in the sinking incident) were piled into the high-sided fibreglass vessels. Unsurprisingly, this severely reduced the number of water-related accidents and upsets, and we made it back with little or no trouble (although I did feel slightly sorry for the poor lass who got lumped with myself and Yohan, the two heaviest guys on the truck, in her mokoro). All in all, I was very happy to get back on terra firma again and head back to the campsite at Maun.

After a very welcome lunch, most of us took the opportunity to catch up on diaries and the like for the early afternoon (though there was also the usual game of frisbee going on), before a bunch of us headed back into Maun to go for scenic flights over the Delta. You might have thought, from the above, that I was sick of that damned river, but I was actually pretty excited to be getting a flight over it in a light aircraft, so as to get a view from something other than a few cms above water-level. And view-wise, the flight didn't disappoint - from up there, I could actually grasp the watery green and blue majesty of the place, as well as seeing a hell of a lot more game. My only slight regret was that I ended up on a plane with two nervous fliers, so our pilot kept it mostly very slow and level, whereas some of the others were apparently doing all kinds of low-level tricks and banked turns. Ah well, you can't have everything!

Given the antics pre-Delta, it wasn't that surprising that it was a relatively quiet night back at the campsite, with only a few of us adjourning to the bar after dinner for a drink or two and some more anarchic table-tennis. Unfortunately, it wasn't the best night's sleep for me, as it turned out that the ground-mat I had grabbed from the pile was one of those with a hell of a lot of damp still inside, which had seeped up onto the bottom of my sleeping bag. I threw the mat out of my tent in irritation and slept (badly) on the floor, only remembering in the morning that I actually had my own little travel-mat in my locker on the truck. D'Oh!

The next day was another of those long ones spent on the road, as we lumbered our way south-westwards across Botswana to our next overnight stop, outside the little town of Ghanzi. This was a very rocky, dusty campsite overall, with little to recommend it apart from the pleasant little pub (amusingly entitled "The Rampant Aardvark") and the patch of greenery behind, which a few of us put to good use for an impromptu game of 3-a-side footie. This pressed home to me just how unfit I'd got, as I was staggering around short of breath after about 15 minutes. When I finally get back to doing regular exercise again, it's going to be painful.

The next day, we were up and off bright and early again, for the drive westwards through the outskirts of the Kalahari desert to the border crossing point on the highway from Botswana to Namibia. Another uneventful, visa-waivered, crossing later, we were into my 6th country of the trip, the Republic of Namibia. And that is where I shall pick up the narrative in the next posting, as otherwise this has the potential to turn into an absolute monster of a post.

Until then, fare thee well!

Pat