Travel to Maun

It was another one of those nasty, early mornings trying to break camp in the dark with our headlamps on and we just chucked the kids in sleeping bags and all.  We’re heading to Maun which we’ve been told is anywhere from 6 to 10 hours away.  Not quite sure why the range in time but we made it in close to eight as the highways seem to be getting a bit better compared to Zimbabwe. 

The trip was pretty incredible as you could look out the window and see just about every animal you could want.  Oh look its ten elephant on that side; oh-no hope the bus will stop for those zebra crossing the road; giraffe, antelope; the only thing we didn’t see were predators but we were flying by at 100 km/hr so if we looked close, I’m sure we would have seen them too!  Botswana is pretty incredible for seeing animals.

The walkway at the lodge along the Kavango River.

Once in Maun, we had a big shop to do for going into the Okavango Delta and apparently we can pack our coolers and everything in with the mokoros.  These are local, hand craved canoes that the locals use with a long pole to move around in the delta.  The young German team stepped up and bought two flats of beer while the rest of us made sure we had a few for happy hour.  We were also told that we needed to bring in our own water so we grabbed four 5 litre bottle, hoping that will be enough for the next two and a half days.  I find it hard to believe that we’ll be able to fit all this into the mokoros but I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

Our meeting place for tomorrows excursion into the delta.

From the town we headed for our accommodation for the night at the Island Safari Lodge.  It was a lodge at one end and we found our camping spot at the far end.  There was a pool there so the kids all got changed and headed there after the tents were set up.  Turns out we had a fair bit of extra time so we took the opportunity to pack for tomorrow and head to the bar for free wifi!  Funny how everyone migrates to the wifi!  Turns out its free for a reason as I couldn’t even download my Gmail account.  I did manage to Facetime mom and dad and dealt with all my work emails so it was good to touch base outside of our little bubble here in Botswana! 

It’s a pretty beautiful place to sit back and relax, watching the Kavango River (not sure if that’s our actual arm of the river or not) flowing to the south.  The Okavango Delta is pretty crazy as the Kavango River flows out of Angola, through Namibia and into Botswana where it forks into many different smaller rivers.  Eventually these rivers just dissipate into nothing as the water gets sucked into the earth and also evaporates.  This is the largest inland delta in the world and the water never flows directly into any ocean.  The wildlife looks incredibly abundant and I can’t wait to explore in the delta over the next few days.