The boats were packed and we were ready to set off down the channels of the Okavango Delta, Botswana. That night I savoured my last roast potatoes, cooked by the wonderful staff at Nguma Island Lodge, and then lay in bed wondering what the morning was going to bring.
I could hear the lions roaring in the distance, and even with the knowledge that I was safely tucked up in my tent, the hairs on the back of my neck rose up, some natural instinct within me recognising the awe- inspiring power of their voices. Nookie’s (the owner of the lodge) pet hippo was snuffling around my tent for food, and at one point I swear she decided the poles my tent was suspended upon were ideally positioned for a back scratch, and she indulged herself while sending shivers through my floorboards. I didn’t sleep well that night, I was too unsure about the next phase of my journey.
Far too early for my liking, I was woken up and told it was time to go. Grumpy and sleepy-eyed, I emerged, bag backed and waited for instructions. We had a rushed breakfast and then attached the last items to the boat, before jumping in ourselves and setting off across Guma Lagoon, just as the sun was rising. The wind rushed past me, as Greg accelerated and the trusty speed boat ripped through the water. Whizzing through the open water was fantastic, and then we hit the tiny channels, enclosed on both sides by reeds which have a tendency to whack you continuously in the head, while showering you with insects. I, happily oblivious as ever, asked Greg about all the tiny seeds which kept landing on me. His reply was not comforting, ‘Um Sam those aren’t seeds, they’re spiders.’ I may have shamed myself by shrieking loudly and energetically dancing around the boat knocking things over while vigorously brushing myself off, sending poor hapless spiders flying back into the Delta.
I was also, unknowingly, being fried to a crisp. I always fool myself into believing that I’m tanning, but unfortunately my embarrassingly pale skin rather goes lobster red. I was so horribly burnt that day that my nose continued peeling for the rest of the trip and I had to hide it in all the photographs. That, coupled with crazy, frizzy hair was possibly the reason why nothing tried to eat me, everything was too afraid of the scary bush lady.
It was getting on in the afternoon, and the sun was dropping low in the sky. We needed to make camp. We arrived at one of the islands, but the only access to the shore was through a tiny channel, which was extremely shallow. The boys got off the boats and pushed them into shore, while we watched for crocodiles. The island was stunning. An ancient baobab was at the centre of our chosen camping site, which was a clearing, surrounded by bushes and trees. We started the laborious process of unpacking the boats and little by little things started to take shape. Two of our party went off to look for firewood while the rest of us continued unpacking. All of a sudden Roger burst through the trees at an alarming rate, and yelled, ‘there’s an elephant coming after me!’
‘Nonsense, Roger,’ his wife tutted in reply, ‘you’re just up to your usual tricks.’ Roger is renowned for his epic stories and practical jokes. However, two seconds later Bernie burst through the trees, followed by an alarmingly big, and obviously aggressive bull elephant, and we realised Roger was not kidding around! There was a mad scramble for the boats, both of which were stuck in the shallow water. The bull glared at us, and started to trumpet and flap his ears, and mock charge us, and somehow I managed to move one of the boats, single- handed, which four grown men hadn’t been able to shift before. It’s amazing what a charging elephant can do to one! We all clambered onto one of the boats, and we poled it, and the boys pushed it out of the shallow channel back into deeper water, just as the elephant was almost upon us. Now we were in quite a predicament. We were in the water, with the elephant following our every move, standing between us and all our camping equipment. We stayed in the water for over an hour, moving from one side of the camping site to the other, with the bull always following us on land. The sun was starting to set and things were getting desperate. Eventually, the bull trumpeted and gave us one last disgusted look, before slowly strolling back into the trees. There was no knowing how far off he had gone so we had to move quickly. We poled back through the shallow channel to the shore, and packed up our stuff in record time. We couldn’t stay on that island, so we had to move to the island next door, and make a fire before the last of the light faded.
The rest of the night was fairly uneventful. We managed to make a fire and pitch our tents just as it was getting dark, and we cooked pasta, before jumping into bed for an early night.
The next day we started packing up the campsite, when Jan happened to look into the dense foliage surrounding us and realised there was a herd of elephants watching us quietly through the trees. Something I still can’t fathom is how an animal so big, can move so quietly. I told one of my friends how we kept getting ambushed by hidden ellies when I got home and he found it hilarious. He couldn’t understand how one can miss an elephant! In their own environment, they simply melt away.
We packed up the campsite, with the ellies moving closer and closer to our camp, and were just poling off when the matriarch wandered to her favourite jackal berry tree in the middle of the campsite and started shaking off the fruit.
Back on the river we flew through the open water, spotting crocs, malachite kingfishers and fish eagles, before entering another long stretch of tiny channels, thickly enclosed by reeds. Part of the problem with these channels is that you don’t know who is waiting for you around the corner. We came upon an elephant bull happily drinking and playing in the shallows, and were charged at by an aggressive male hippo protecting his pod which comprised of four bobbing baby hippo heads.
We reached our chosen island. It was quite tough to navigate through the shallow channels to get to shore, but the view was worth it. The tiny island overlooked a large pool of water, covered in reeds, with other islands stretching out around it. There was a dense forest area on one side, full of birds, and golden grasses waving in the breeze in the middle part, with more trees on the other side. We set up our camp, and had a scrumptious brunch while discussing the plans for the day. General consensus was to go for a walk, although it was going to be difficult because the Okavango was flooded, and the normal islands to walk on were largely underwater in parts. Everyone was dying to walk on to lions, however, when this idea popped up I kept pretty quiet. Walking on to lions is a frequent occurrence in the bush, and the important thing to do is to keep a cool head- don’t run, stand your ground, and make yourself look intimidating. Um, as I mentioned in my other blog, I wasn’t terribly happy with this plan- being a rather small person, I thought my plan to intimidate the lions would rather end up with them laughing at me, and seeing me as an easy lunch. Greg told me a story about how they recently walked onto a mother lion with her cubs. She was immediately alert, and warned them to stay away, by snarling at them, and getting up quickly. However, when they started to back away she left them alone, and watched them until they were out of sight. I wasn’t dying to test these theories, literally or figuratively.
We donned on our walking kit- I wore as much brown and green as possible with the intention of looking like a tree, and jumped onto the boat, and poled through the shallow water to the island next door. It was too shallow to get the boat all the way to the land, so we took off our shoes, and squelched through the muddy water. Once on shore we looked through the trees and bush surrounding us, and decided it was all clear, and started to walk in single file. I found a fallen tree and jumped onto it, and stood looking out over our path. A large stretch of water blocked our way, and in the distance I could see a lone elephant shaking trees for their fruit. A herd of impala stood quietly alert to our left, ears twitching with each new sound, while, on the horizon, I could make out a herd of zebra, grazing in the grassland. Greg refused to let a little bit (or a lot) of water stop him, so he started trekking through the flooded grassland, with the water steadily rising until it was up to his thighs. He’s a tall guy, so I knew that when I waded through I would pretty much be swimming. I held my breath as I entered the muddy, murky lake, full of reeds, and started to trek through it, with the water rising until it was up to my belly button. I could feel tiny creatures swimming past me, and slimy weeds got caught in my takkies, but I made it across, and settled on a tall termite mound to watch the others cross and to seek out our pesky elephant friend.
He wasn’t far away. We located him hiding in a patch of thick foliage, right in the middle of our path. We were going to have to creep past him. Elephants are another animal that you are not supposed to run from- generally they see you as a predator, and if you stand your ground they tend to avoid confrontation. Well, in theory anyway. They are very human-like creatures, with immense intelligence which makes them playful but also unpredictable. I started thinking about my own survival strategies- elephants have terrible eye sight so hiding behind a tree, so long as they are not down wind from you, can work, you can also duck behind anthills. I followed the others, and we sped past as silently as possible, sticking close together, hiding behind anthills and trees. He didn’t see us, and we left him happily picking off jackal berries. We walked out through the trees, into a clearing, to find a family of Kudu grazing in the tall grass, and an ancient baobab, with its bark stripped off by elephants. There was another forest area on the other side of the clearing, and we wandered towards it, startling off a herd of timid impala who were gone in a flash of leaping feet.
Tall leadwood, sausage trees and camel thorns, amongst others, reached up all around us, creating dappled shade, which we welcomed after standing in the sun. Birds called to each other, and we spotted a lilac breasted roller, the cheeky crested barbet, red eyed doves, little bee- eaters and the black fronted bulbul. What we really wanted to see, however, was the Pel’s fishing owl. This is an extremely rare bird, which looks sort of like a reddish- brown, giant, flying teddy-bear. I am new to being a twitcher, and I can’t say I understand what all the hype is about most of the time, but when we finally found the Pel’s and I saw how majestic and beautiful he is, I had to admit it was worth the forty minutes we spent searching for him! Greg found me a feather lying on the forest floor, and I keep it on my desk, and it reminds me of the Delta every time I see it.
We headed back to camp, and had a late snack, and spent the rest of the afternoon lazing about in the campsite and swapping stories. I had a little wander on our tiny island, and saw a honey badger dart off into the undergrowth, a blur of silver- black, and found our resident fish eagle in one of the trees.
That night we could hear the lions waking up for the hunt, and calling to each other, on the island adjacent to ours, and we watched the sky change to a dramatic pink- purple, which reflected on the water around us. Our island’s hippo (we named her Dorothy) started her nightly forage, and the tiny skops owl began his tranquil song.We resolved to go for another walk the next day, on the island where we heard the lions. We were determined to find them.
A terrifying sound awoke me – we suspected that the lions were attacking an elephant calf, and the wails and warning trumpeting of the elephants was haunting and deafening. The hyenas were whooping their deathly chants and I could hear something moving around our tent. I didn’t sleep well that night.
We woke up and had breakfast. Bernie baked us some amazing bread, by making a dough, and then cooking it in a hole in the ground, surrounded by burning coals. We poled our boat to the other island, and set off on our walk. This island was also waterlogged, and very quickly we had to pull off our socks and shoes, pull up our pants and wade through water up to our thighs. The water was quite chilly, and I kept stepping on suspiciously slimy things, but I reached the other side safely, and we arrived at the entrance of a forest. We were all a bit on edge at this point. The forest was extremely dense, and enclosed, meaning that if we did encounter any lions or elephants we would not really be able to back away from them very easily. Greg went ahead and sussed out the scene, but I still felt uneasy. I was completely out of my comfort zone, and I realised that if something were to happen, I couldn’t trust myself to react properly as opposed to instinctively. I think that’s a big part of why I was so afraid- in a situation like that, you have to be able to trust yourself as well as the other people you’re with.
We wandered through the forest, but apart from seeing a few birds, it was strangely empty. We exited the trees, walking out into grass taller than I was, still on the look out for lions. I stood on a termite mound and looked out over the Delta around me, breathing in the colour and vibrancy of the place. As we were walking back, Greg was out in front and happened to see an elephant bull that was standing not 20 metres from where we were.He had seen us. He flapped his ears warningly, and trumpeted and then charged at us, moving quickly, and we all backed away fast. Forgetting everything I had been told I started to run through the grass, not caring whether there were any predators concealed within it, I just wanted to get away. I tripped and fell flat on my face, but Greg helped me up, and we hid in some trees, and our pursuer got bored and wandered off.
We got back to the boat and headed for to camp. The boys decided to go fishing and caught six fresh bream which we battered and served for lunch with Bernie’s fresh bread. We could see giraffes moving on the island across from us, and a herd of wildebeest. That evening, we went for a sun-downer boat trip down the river, watching the spectacular sunset, while enjoying a few beers, and later, we cooked my favourite pot- roast fillet.
Roger decided to go and paint in the forest the following morning and he was quietly minding his own business, when a lonesome ellie wandered through the trees, about ten metres from where he was positioned. He slowly got up and left his painting stuff and backed away into our camp, leaving the ellie feeling the easel with his trunk! That same elephant really loved the island, and later on in the day he ventured into our campsite. We all moved away towards the back of the forest and hid behind a giant termite mound, and watched birds, while he munched solidly away at a jackal berry tree in the middle of our campsite for a good hour and a half, before strolling into the water and swimming across to another island.
There are no ablutions facilities in the Okavango, and Greg and I bonded a bit too much for my liking, when I had to summon him, with a spade in one hand and a lighter in the other, so that he could guard me from potential predators. Although we had a bush shower it was a mission to set up, as all the water had to be heated up in the kettle, and so it was much easier to simply take the boat out onto a shallow sand bank, and duck into the freezing cold water, with everyone else keeping a watchful eye out for crocs. I had a lovely swim the one day, on a sand bank just off our island, but when I returned there later that night and shone my torch and found big reptilian eyes staring back at me, I decided I would henceforth opt for the shower.
We never found our elusive lions. We heard them every night, taunting us, but because there was so much water they were impossible to track. My relationship with elephants became rather strained on this trip- they didn’t give us an easy time, and I had just decided they were aggressive, unpredictable creatures, when I happened to look out into the water, and saw two adult ellies, supporting their baby across the lake between their trunks, and I decided that they weren’t so bad after all.
We went for walks everyday, and each time I grew bolder and more comfortable with my environment, but I stayed alert, and learned to control my fears. We walked on to another herd of ellies with a young calf, but were able to sneak away before they saw us, and we saw the flash of a leopard darting into some trees in the distance. Greg told me a story about how one year they went with a guide called Ibi, who was lounging on a stretcher bed when a leopard crept up to him, stole his hat, and ran back up the nearest tree! Ibi shouted at the leopard who dropped his hat, and stole away quickly into the forest.
On subsequent trips, while walking through the tall grass one day, I caught a glimpse of brown in the corner of my eye, as a caracal slid off a rock and disappeared into the bushes- it could have been walking alongside me and I wouldn’t have known. On one of the nights, I was lying in the tent when I heard a splash, as something crossed the river. More splashes followed and I counted about 23 elephants rumbling into our campsite, who then proceeded to start bashing down all the trees around us. I was sleeping next to the grub tent, which contained oranges, and some of the elephants could smell the citrus, and started nuzzling my tent with their trunks, and I could see the tent moving where they pushed on it. It was hot, so I had no cover on the tent’s roof window, which was just netting, and I saw a large bull staring into the tent, flapping his ears menacingly. He stayed like that for three hours, looking into my tent, while his friends crashed around us, searching for jackal berries. I could be found curled up in a foetal position in the corner of the tent, wondering what to do when a) the elephants stepped on me or b) a tree crashed down on me. We couldn’t leave the tents, because the elephants would have sniffed us out immediately, and because we didn’t know what else was lurking around. Rule number one is you never leave the tent at night! Finally they moved off, and I heard them reentering the river and swimming away.
The Okavango tests you in every possible way. It makes you doubt yourself, and forces you to confront your own fears and fragility, but it is also a place of immense beauty. There’s a wildness to it, and once you’ve been a part of it, you long for it for the rest of your life. It’s the low rumble of the lion’s call, a Pel’s fishing owl’s feather, a leopard’s eye and a hippo’s grunt. On one of our walks we found a flock of Meyer’s parrots sitting on a dead tree like Christmas decorations, and when we accidentally disturbed them, they simultaneously took flight in a mass of beating wings and vibrant green. If we had been there a minute later we might have missed them, but the bush is like that. You never know what you might see, each day is different, and where there is life for one moment, another second later, there may be emptiness. However, then you look harder and you see a flurry of termites busily foraging for food, or you notice a determined dung beetle rolling a ball of excrement three times his own size, and you realise that there is no such thing as emptiness in the bush, but always creatures and plants carrying on with the honest and sometimes difficult task of being alive. While paddling through the water we saw masses of water lilies- it felt like we had dived into one of Monet’s paintings of the water lilies and were wading through brush strokes of blue, purple, green. Tiny painted reed frogs, just bigger than an adult man’s thumb nail adorned the reeds, and for an instant I wondered what it must be like to spend your life clinging to a plant, singing your froggy song and swaying in the breeze, dodging clumsy hippos. Maybe the best way to explain the Delta is through Roger’s painting- a gorgeous blur of imperfect strokes, creating a stunning whole, the colours and light drawing your eye, but with a tiny smudge in the corner, from the tip of an elephant’s trunk, which makes the work absolutely priceless.
For accommodation in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, Getaway Accommodation has some great options.
