Entering the Okavango

Selfie leaving the poler's station with Bettie in the background.

The morning was a sleep in day compared to our trip standards as we had to make the delta tour meeting for 8 o’clock.  We are taking all of our tents and sleeping mats with us so we had to pack up everything as usual, throw our big bags in the truck and head off with our day packs, sleeping bags and anything else we wanted to bring into the delta.  It was a pretty big pile of gear but these guys have done it before and didn’t seem phased by all the gear.

The town created for the polers into the delta.

From the lodge we jumped in a motor boat for 50 minutes to head to the poling station where we were to get our mokoro and poler for the venture into the delta.  It was a gorgeous trip up the twisting narrow river and we saw a ton of bird life.  There is nothing but small farms along the way to the park so we also saw our fill of cattle, goats, donkeys and the odd horse sitting in the water, eating all the lush aquatic plants. 

Poling out into the Okavango Delta.

Once up to the poling station there were people everywhere as groups were coming out at the same time as we were going in.  We unloaded all of our gear out of the truck and waited for the chaos to work its way through.  The town has been constructed solely for the purpose of tourism into the delta. 

Crazy stork in the reeds.

The polers sign up if they want to take a crew into the delta on their mokoro  The head woman organizes who is going with which group so once they finished their meeting we were given our polers and we were off.  There are men and women from early twenties to sixties that take you into the delta.  Alyssa and I had Muma Bettie, who was at least in her late fifties who spoke very little English but stopped to chat and laugh with other polers throughout most of the trip.  Shannon and Jenna had Alicia who was probably in her early 20’s.  I felt kind of guilty as Bettie ran around loading her boat but she had a place for everything.  They pull the sleeping mats open and jam them into the boat to form a great seat with a back rest which made for a very comfortable, relaxing push upriver.

After our swim with Alyssa's weaving.

It was pretty cool heading up to our camping spot.  The area is nothing but reeds and a bit of open water where the main flow is.  The polers have done this trip many times and take a short cut so they don’t have to pole so far.  It’s created a bit of a super highway and we passed a number of boats coming out as we headed in.  The average depth isn’t over a meter so this is one of the only ways to get into the delta and explore.  I could see how a canoe would be really had to paddle through the reeds and poling is definitely the way to go.  The trip was very soothing as you hear many different birds, the scraping of reeds down the side of the mokoro and the chatting of the polers in Zulu.

We found our campsite which has no facilities what-so-ever and were given the talk about “don’t leave camp without a guide”, how to operate the shovel with the freshly dug hole/toilet in the ground and the toilet etiqueAtte (when the shovel and toilet paper is gone, the toilet is in use!).  This should be interesting as most of the people on this trip haven’t camped at all, never mind know how to squat over a hole to go to the bathroom!  The other cool thing with our camp is that everyone camps together, the polers, guide and guest all intermingle.  It proved for a fun and entertaining camp atmosphere and we were all anxious to explore more of the area.  This was especially the case when Chiara came back from the toilet to tell us there was an elephant a few hundred meters away!

Our very close interaction with the elephants... there's no where to run!

After we had some down time through the heat of the day (some of us took a swim) it was time to head out for our evening hike from camp.  We were split into three groups and headed out to watch the elephants walking toward our camp.  It was pretty unnerving standing in the middle of an open field watching these two huge bull elephant chowing away on trees.  One kept on eating while the other stopped to size us up.  What a crazy feeling, being a few hundred meters away from these massive animals and having to trust your guide to know what these wild animals might do.  As we moved on a little further three move elephant came into view and we watched as they joined the others and started shaking the pine palms for their nuts to drop. 

These termite mounds are 60 + years old.  They're huge!

It was definitely the “wow, we’re really in Africa” moment!  We walked a bit further looking at tracks and pooh and checked out the hippo pool when it was time to head back to camp as the sun was setting.  On the way back we had to stop to see what the elephants were doing as they walked right across where we had been an hour before toward another camp to the north of us.  As they headed across we walked behind them to get back to our camp.  Turns out later that night a few people had to stay away from their camp for a bit as the elephants shook trees within 5 meters of one tent.  Once they got all the pine palms off the trees they just moved on like nothing had happened!  Pretty WILD in both meanings of the word!!!

Back in camp it was a mellow dinner and hang out by the fire for a bit.  After it got dark there were these funny lights blinking all throughout the reeds that I thought might be bioluminescence when I first saw it.  I flashed up my head lamp to see they weren’t in the water but on the reeds adjacent to the water.  Turns out they were fire flies blinking back and forth to one another trying to find a mate.  I saw a number of them flying but told the kids right away and they were off to collect a bunch in a bottle.  Pretty cool to actually see fire flies and it provided endless entertainment for the kids for the evening.

Alyssa and Amelia on the evening hike.  Sunsets are pretty nice here.