Saturday, 19 February 2011

Day 90 to 91: Mokoro journey to the delta

Narrow canoes carried us along reed-lined waters to the world's largest delta: the Okovango Delta. After being poled along for a couple of hours on a peaceful and increasingly hot journey, we made camp in a tree-studded clearing, with Haggis enthusiastically digging us a toilet nearby.

In the hot afternoon we headed to a safe swimming spot, guided by our polers, local Botswanians who grew up in the delta area. A fun hour was spent watching people try to pole the mokoros, with often hilarious results. The soft silty sand of the delta quickly became fuel for a mud war, with the boys specialising in drying balls of sand until they formed solid ammunition. Michael landed a couple of unintentionally destructive blows, with Tanith copping it on the face and Satoshi receiving a strong shot to a tender area. We finished our delta evening with s'mores by the campfire, drinking games and the tunes of Toto's "Africa."

The following morning we weren't lucky enough to spot game on an early walk, though we met interesting insects, tiny frogs and saw plenty of evidence that animals had been active before we got there. Our mokoros brought us out of the delta and 10 of us took a scenic flight to view the delta from a different perspective. From the air we could really appreciate the size of the delta and we enjoyed seeing lots of elephants, giraffes, hippos and buffalo.

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