Chobe River cruise and the Okavango Delta, Bostwana

From Victoria Falls we drove the short distance over the border at Kazungula and into Botswana where we set up in Thebe camp in Kasane on the banks of the Chobe River, at Kasane four countries meet, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Zambia and two major rivers, the Zambezi and Chobe. From here we went on a river cruise in the Chobe National Park (11,000 sq km), it was so lovely and relaxing after the busy few days we had just spent in Victoria Falls. We saw lots of elephant and buffalo grazing and drinking in the shallow marshlands, there were also a few hippo and we saw one of them giving us a big yawn, but this is a warning sign, not a sign of tiredness. There were quite a few crocodiles basking in the sunshine on the banks, more than we have seen anywhere else.

From Kasane we drove, via Nata, to Sedia Camp in Maun. The following day we were collected by Afro Safaris, to go into the Okavango Delta. We arrived at the mokoro station (a mokoro is a traditional canoe carved out of a single tree trunk), all our kit, including tents, sleeping mats, food and cooking pots were loaded into the mokoros’ and we set off, two people and one poler (the person who propels and steers, with a long wooden pole) to a mokoro.

It was such a peaceful trip to our island bush camp, gliding through the reeds and channels of the delta, listening to all the wildlife calls, we stopped off at one point to track a heard of elephants in the bush. Once we arrived at camp all our tents were up and the camp fire was burning. The toilet had been “dug”, literally a hole in the ground with a pile of dirt next to it, there was a shovel that you had to take with you to the toilet, to indicate it was “engaged”, you also used it to shovel some dirt into the hole after you were finished.

We headed off into the bush for a walk with two of our guides, the only animals we saw were zebra, but the landscape was interesting, completely flat except for hundreds of termite mounds, all of the ones I saw had been abandoned, but they were now used by locals as high points from which to look out over the land. You had to watch your step, otherwise you might fall down one of the anteater holes that littered the ground. There was a lot of charred grass and trees from where the bushmen had set the land a light to burn down the grass to allow new growth and shoots to come through. We cam across one red wood tree which was still smouldering away and had been doing so for weeks, it was ghostly white and you could clearly see the shape of the tree from the ash that had fallen from it.

We used an upturned mokoro as a table to prepare dinner on and cooked on the open camp fire. Then sat round the camp fire while our guides entertained us with traditional Botswanian singing and dancing. The stars, known as “bush TV”, were absolutely amazing, as they have been throughout my travels in Africa, you could clearly see the Milkway, Mars and other planets. You could also hear a lot of animals, frogs, birds and hippos. During the night, if you needed to go to the toilet, you had to be sure to check outside your tent with a torch before getting out of it, because animals could quite easily be right in the camp and surprise you while at the toilet!

We went for a trip on the mokoros for a couple of hours, through narrow channels in the reeds, with the odd acacia bush that will attack you in your mokoro. We ended up in a big open pool full of waterlilly’s just before sunset, only to see the head of three or four hippos popping up and blowing water up in big spurts, then disappearing again, only to reappear closer to us, it was great to watch them at such close quarters.

I had a go at poling one of the mokoros, initially I could only make it go round in circles, or backwards, but eventually I got the hang of it, you had to use the pole as a rudder after every pass, the guides made it look so easy.

Our second visit to the delta was very different from being on the ground, we took a 45 minute flight over it with Delta Air in a very small, one propellor, 6 seater plane. It was absolutely spectacular, the landscape was just amazing, you could see rivers winding their way across the land, through pools of water, you could see lots of marsh lands and make out the channels we had just travelled through on our mokoros, and we saw so many herds of elephants, along with hippo, zebra, giraffe and impala.