The main point of entry into the delta is via Botswana's third largest town, Maun, it's surprisingly very modern, with a Nando's in the centre of town! And we came across an outdoor funeral directors- This is Africa after all. Whilst in Maun, I'd definitely recommend a scenic flight over the Delta from the international airport there (which featured on Dave's 'Bush Pilots'), this really gives you the vast size of the Delta plus you will never see so many animals in your life!! There's only five passengers per plane and the pilots really helpful, we saw a huge heard of 100+ elephants and I managed to see two lionesses, plus many more hippos, giraffes and flock of flamingos! Since we took the flight at about 4pm, we also saw the sun begin to set as the flight was about an hour in duration. Don't miss out on an opportunity to do this!
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| Me being the youngest, got chucked in the back of the plane! |
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| Over 100 elephants |
From our lodge, the Island Safari Lodge, we took a speedboat to the local mokoro station, this was also a bird watching tour, before I was never interested in bird, I found them so dull probably because the most interesting bird Ive ever seen at home is a woodpecker but the colours on these birds, it was incredible! From the fishing eagle to the Arabian starling to ones that could walk on the leaves on the water, and none of them were phased by humans. I wished that I had brought a better camera (though mine broke two days in) just to show the vast colour show they all had, just to even show you a picture of a hornbill that isn't from the zoo!
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| The sunrise at the lodge before we left for the Delta. Perfect. |
At the mokoro station you find a poler (the canoe..steerer? Like a gondola in Venice) and then head to your mokoro, your poler -mine was Lucas, top guy!- will then navigate their way through the channels and reeds whilst you dodge the cobwebs that stretch across them, terrifying may I add. You then cross the domestic animals fence, meaning you're now in dangerous animal territory. The Delta is full of hippos that laze in the river, they dont feel threatened by the mokoros because in water there is no territory, only on the river banks does a male hippo have territory...that's when the trespassers get gobbled up. The mokoro ride takes around 90 minutes, and you find that you're the only humans in this area, other my group we never saw any humans until we got back to the lodge, and I think thats what I loved the most about the place, the seclusion.
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| Through the reeds, dodging cobwebs and frogs |
We took a game walk on another piece of grassland (I'm thankful it wasn't the one I was sleeping on, or I would have never have slept!), saw many footprints of animals and some lion ones too but the only actual animal we saw was....dramatic pause....a dung beetle! It was a shame so the guide turned the walk into a talk about all the plants, showing us the reeds people us to weave their roofs, which turned out to be really informative, I also saw the best sunset of my life.
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| Evening game walk in the beautiful grasslands |
In the evening, we made a camp fire, then our fabulous polers then gave us a sing and dance, to which we all joined in dancing around the camp fire! What started off as them showing us a piece of their culture turned into 30 people of 8 nationalities merging together dancing the night away creating our own music, followed by the funniest camp fire games and us all lying on kalahari sands looking up at the stars above us. This is when I think overland tour companies rule, but only when facilitated with great company.
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| Evening mokoro back to our wild camp |
To get back to our lodge, we took the mokoros back to their station and then took the speedboat back to the lodge. An amazing two days.
If visiting Botswana, you really can't miss out on a wild camp in the Okavango Delta, even if camping isn't your thing it's only one night and trying to fall asleep to the sounds of hippos in the water and a camp fire crackling is both petrifying and fantastic.
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