Northern Botswana – Botswana is flat. Super flat. With the only perceptible hills being the several metres high grey termite mounds that dot the landscape. It is also incredibly green. Acacia trees and leafy bushes create a dense low lying growth as far as the eye can see. This Is the Kalahari Desert apparently, although it’s hard to believe when driving down the road with a swath of greenery on either side of you. It’s only when you step out of the truck and head for a roadside bush toliet that the fact this is indeed a desert is confirmed. Hidden underneath all those trees and bushes, is indeed nothing but sand. Lots of it.
This is land for cattle. Beef being one of the countries major exports. With standards high enough to qualify for import into the EU. And this is land for truffles. I learned from the San bushmen, the original inhabitants, that they can sniff them out without the use of pigs. And more excitedly, that we are here during truffle season. This is also land for sparkly diamonds. Another major big export. It slightly amused me to learn that they were only discovered here in 1967, coincidentally only 1 year after the British stopped ruling. Now Botswana is one of the few African countries that export clean diamonds, ones not used in warfare. But this land is montonuous, and long bus drives have been tedious. Which made ditching the truck for two days for a boat, even more welcome.
All this lush greenery, meant the desert was getting water from somewhere. That somewhere being Angola on its Northern border. Every year between March and May, the Autumn rains surge the Congo river sending the waters South into Botswana. Just above the town of Maun, the waters hit a huge fault line, creating the largest inland delta in the world – the Okavango – with hundreds of channels. By June, the full accumulation of the Congos waters floods the area, creating a vast oasis in the middle of the Kalahari Desert.
Our overnight excursion into this unique landscape, involved unpacking our truck and our own bags and loading up just the essentials for a night of wild bush camping on one of the many islands hidden between the waterways. With our gear selected, we headed towards Boro Village, where we would board our mokoros – tiny wooden canoes carved from the gigantic trunks of the upside down Baobab tree. Our arrival must have looked like a circus to the locals. Our pile of “essentials” at the waters edge included 12 tent bags and accompanying poles, 20 foam mattresses, a similar number of sleeping bags and pillows, 20 oversized, stuffed personal day bags, a cooler full of alcohol and a second full of food, a three foot wide gas camp stove with gas cylinder, 3 large plastic blue buckets for washing up, a green crate with plastic plates and stainless steel cups, another full of sauces, condiments, and coffee, a towering assortment of pots and pans, a 20 roll packet of toliet paper, and a shovel. Somehow our polers managed to arrange all of this into our 12 mokoros, and we set off.
Since I started travelling, I haven’t been particularly fond of activities that posed any level of life threatening adventure to them. Being rowed in a delicately balanced, termite ridden canoe in hippo and crocodile infested waters being one of them. I won’t lie, I wasn’t overly excited by the forthcoming 2 hour journey. I had upped my bravery this time though and took the risk of bringing my camera along, something in the past I was too worried to do fearing a probable capsize. (Seriously, sometimes I wonder given this level of trepidation how I ever found the nerve to jump out of an airplane. Twice!) Selfies my mokoro partner shared with me later confirmed how petrified I was. To start anyway. Eventually, I forced myself to relax and enjoy the cruise. And what a beautiful journey it was. With the sun still low on the horizon, the surrounding landscape was bathed in a delicate yellow glow. From my low level, I couldn’t see much more than the tall reeds surrounding us, the white and purple water lilies floating amonst their pads on the water, and the mokoros in front of us, peacefully cutting their way through a narrow path, headed into some unknown direction. It was absolutely magically!
At our arrival on the island which would be our home for the night, the circus unravelled again, this time accompanied with at least 13 polers and guides and all their essentials for the night. It seemed like an obscene amount of supplies and helpers for 20 guests and a one night stay. I was beginning to debate if all this effort was worth it. I mean the boat ride was fantastic. Did we need the bush camping night as well? By now, we’d been on the road for 18 days and were experts at setting up camp. So it wasn’t long before we we were sitting in a circle on our camp chairs, yes we brought 20 of those too, passing around a rugby ball waiting for our lunch. Lunch came and went and we had several hours to kill before our evening safari walk. I passed the time unceremoniously with a long nap. There wasn’t much else to do really. Our lead guide had set the security standards on our arrival. We were under no circumstances allowed to explore any area outside our camp, tents were to be zipped at all times, and if you needed the bush toliet in the night, you must take your tent partner with you to help spot any predators ( I.e lions, elephants, leopards, hippos) as you did your business, but recommended not going at all until morning. (A slight aside about the bush toliet. This was literarily a square hole in the ground which you peed and pooed in, then shovelled some dirt on top. To reach the spot, you had to meander down a path behind the campsite, underneath a fallen tree, and further into the bush. You knew the ‘toilet’ was free when the shovel and roll of toliet paper were standing guard at the start of the trail. Heading off down the path just before midnight just before I went to bed, with nothing more than my dim head torch lighting the way was not overly comforting, even though I presumed the rowdy noise of the drunken group were probably scaring off any predators. This fear was particularly heightened after our encounter on the evening safari, but needs and modesty prevailed.)
On my first trip to Africa, eight years ago, I was too petrified to embark on a walking safari. A recent chapter in a book I was reading about a safari guide in the Okavango Delta re confirmed my fears that this was a dangerous activity. Even he refused to do them! I was expecting to be charged by elephants or pounced on by a pride of lions. Disappointedly, our land adventure was pretty tame. We did get close to a herd of zebra, but they are notoriously skittish. And there was a herd of wildebeest in the distance. The only hint of a possibility of danger was the paw print of a female lion we stumbled across, but alas it was calculated at a day old. Hump. None the less, the walk was nice after days of sitting in the bus. The searing heat of the mid day sun started to dispaate, and as the evening chill started coming in, our guide suggested we head back to camp, stopping along the way to watch the sun set from our mokoro.
So back in the boats we went, winding our way through the small openings in the reeds that created a narrow pathway. Just as we were about to round a hidden corner an almighty bellow sounded. It was the unmistakable low rumble of an agitated hippo. I knew from previous safaris that the hippo is the most dangerous of all the African animals. Their aggressiveness, speed, and size, make them the most feared among guides. Suddenly, I was again, very uncomfortable about being in a small, wooden easily capsizeable boat with no idea where the hippo was. On tenter hooks, we rounded a few more concealed bends, then hit an open patch of water. There in the middle were six massive hippos bathing a mere 75 ft from us. I stared in awe and with fear as their heads hovered just above the water and occasionally pierced the top long enough for their jaws to open wide to show off large teeth. This truly had to be a once in a life time experience to be so close to such a wild animal in such a remote spot. We kept our distance, but paused to watch them for a while as the sun set behind them turning the horizon red. Later that night, I was awoken in my tent, despite my ear plugs, by the bellow of hippos nearby. As I contemplated how far away they were, I confirmed to myself that all the hassle of having this one night of a wild bush camping in the middle of the Okavango Delta was indeed well worth all the effort!