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

Playing With Fire

Hello again once more. Time to attempt another quick update.

So, where were we? Oh yes, heading south-west across Botswana, from the border town of Kasane to the boom-town of Maun, by the edge of the Okavango Delta. Now, the Okavango Delta is pretty much unique, as it's basically the only delta in the world which terminates inland - all the others (so far as I know, though I wouldn't be surprised if some of you go try and dig another example out...) flow into seas or, occasionally, lakes, but the Okavango flows down from Angola into Botswana, spreads out across the flat pans of the northern Kalahari desert and, through a combination of seepage and evaporation, just kind of dies away. Bizarre.

Anyways, Maun is the nearest town to the most accessible bit of the delta, and hence has become the headquarters for trips out into the waterways, usually conducted by mokoro, a type of canoe/punt made out of (traditionally) local wood or (increasingly) fibreglass, and poled along using a branch. Unfortunately, Maun is quite a way from Kasane, so we spent much of the day (yet again) on the truck. During this time, it was suggested that we could have a Punch Party when we arrived in Maun (i.e. everybody chip in and make a big batch of punch for that evening). We decided this was an absolutely spiffing idea, and pretty much everybody pitched in, such that, when we arrived in Maun, a few of our number were dispatched to the Bottle Shop armed with a large wad of cash and told to set us up for a par-tay.

This they duly did, and one of the cool-boxes/eskies/chilly-bins (delete as appropriate, based upon nationality) was washed out and disinfected before serving duty as a punch mixer. Worryingly, the stuff seemed to be made up of about one part hard alcohol to one part wine to one part soft drinks. More worryingly still, when tasted it turned out to be really rather pleasant. Some effort was made at restraint, by attempting to wait until dinner was ready, but the collective willpower just wasn't there, so people ended up already stuck in by the time dinner was up. I honestly can't remember at this remove what we had for dinner (I would guess it was probably pasta and sauce or lasagne...), but it all seemed to be going pretty well - everyone was quite happy and chilled out, and looking forward to our trip into the delta the next morning (even if not to the bush-camping the next evening). Everything had started to be cleared away, and we were all sitting around the fire, as usual, chatting away with whoever our neighbours happened to be at that point.

What happened next was slightly confusing, as most of us only turned at the sound of a disturbance, but it seems that Heetan and Jon had been joking around a bit, and somebody had started to throw drinks. Heetan swore blind straight afterwards that Jon had thrown one at him first, although Valdy and several others reckoned he had been the one to start it. Whatever happened, the next thing we realised Heetan was diving for the kettle, on the edge of the fire in the middle of the circle. As some of us looked on in horror, he seemed determined to throw the boiling contents at Jon. Luckily, Paul was rather faster on the uptake than most of us, and jumped on Heetan, forcing him to drop the kettle and pinning him to the ground. After struggling for a while, loudly proclaiming that Jon had started it, Heetan eventually quietened down, and headed off to bed. Most of the rest of us just sat there, anywhere between surprised, shocked or horrified at events.

Surprisingly, this didn't put a real downer on the rest of the evening. Everyone decided that there was no point in letting this spoil an otherwise fun night, so we cracked on, eventually finishing up the punch and heading over to the campsite bar, where matters progressed further, thanks in no small part to reuniting Valdy with a Shooters menu (the drunken table-tennis probably helped as well). Eventually, though, even the most hardened, party-starved idiots amongst us decided that enough was enough, and we all traipsed our ways back to bed.

And here I will have to pause again in the narrative, as my hour on the net is up. Until next time, dear readers, fare well!

Pat

Heffalumps

Here we go again, back to the narrative and Botswana. Our first stop was at the Thebe River Safari Camp, which is just outside Kasane, which is just over the border. So there wasn't far at all to drive before setting up for the evening, which was lucky as, as has already been noted, we were running late for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, this meant making camp in the dark again, but I'd been at this log enough by then that it wasn't really an issue. The evening was pretty muted, as a few of us went to the bar and watched the latest news from London on the TV. Then it was off to bed for an early night, ahead of a dawn safari drive in the nearby Chobe National Park.

Now, we did a few game drives in the course of my trip with Acacia, and quite a few of them were dawn ones (dawn and dusk being the best times to see animals, and often the best light for photos as well). But I don't think we ever did one that was anything like the anticlimax of that Chobe one. We saw a few hippos at a distance, a hyena, several of the ominpresent antelopes (I'm pretty certain there was an impala among them), and one elephant. Which is both pretty pathetic for several hours driving in the freezing cold (the nights in Botswana actually made it feel like winter in Africa), and astonishing given that Chobe is near-enough infested with elephants - there's apparently something like 15 or 16 per square km, as part of one of the biggest elephant populations in the world. The one we did see was pretty good value, though, as it was an old bull elephant who was "in musk" - basically, we had stumbled upon a horny grandpa heffalump! Valdy had informed us that you never forget the smell of an elephant in musk, and he wasn't wrong - it's not particularly easy to describe, but it's very distinctive! It almost got a little hairy, though, when our pachyderm pal decided to wander forward and challenge the land cruiser next to our truck (it promptly got out of the way, and he ambled off into the bushes). So that enlivened things a little bit near the end, but it was generally agreed that this was a bit of a damp squib.

Back at the camp, we had a bit of down-time, and people could just catch up on their diaries or do their washing or whatever, while lunch was prepared and we waited around for the afternoon's scheduled sunset cruise (this time, NOT a booze cruise!). One good precedent was set when we got a couple of the balls (a football and Scott's Aussie Rules football) out of the truck and a few of us had a bit of a kickabout - thenceforward, the balls would come out at almost every stop (including our frequent stops at the side of the road for people to water the bushes), which probably saved me from getting even more unfit in the course of the trip than I already would have.

After a quiet afternoon, we were taken back down to the Chobe River (which forms the northern border of the park, as well as the border between Botswana and Namibia at that point) and loaded onto our boat for the afternoon's cruise. We were quite glad to have gotten there moderately early, as we managed to bag some seats - in the end, there were several other groups on there as well, and it was pretty cosy. A few of us were indulging in quiet sundowners, though most people were happy to leave this at the stage of a beer or two rather than anything too exotic (there were plenty of dodgy memories of what happens from mixing alcohol and boats to go around). And the cruise more than made up for the morning's disappointments - plenty of elephants, bunch of hippos, whole load of antelope (including Kudu, which we hadn't seen many of yet), and we saw it all from so close up. This is the joys of these river cruises, which use shallow-draft catamarans to get in really close to the wildlife, most of which is now habituated to having humans nearby. Combined with a gorgeous sunset, this was a really nice end to the day.

Back at the camp, it was potje (POY-key) for dinner - can't remember if I explained about it before, but this is a South African speciaility, a stew cooked in a cast-iron pot over the fire. If you get the chance, do try it, as it's reeeeally nice. After that, I took advantage of having a campsite with power, and backed up another load of my photos using Paul's laptop (having a guide with a laptop he is ready to lend you has to be one of the most best things you can have on one of these trips - saves a fortune on getting it done at camera shops, and is often more reliable given some of the experiences people had, especially in Tanzania). Again, though, it was a relatively early night, as we had another early start and another long drive the next day, as we headed down across Botswana to Maun, the gateway town for the Okavango Delta. That, though, will have to wait for the next instalment, as I've already burned up a lot of time and money online today (damn MSN Messenger...)

Take care and have fun y'all,

Pat