Friday, November 6, 2009

Okavangodelta

After nearly one week in Kasane with a lot of interesting insights into the african life, I went with a collective taxi to Nata and then by bus to Maun. Maun is the centre for journeys into Okavangodelta.


Traditional Mokoro in Okavangodekta
Okavango River starts in Angola, flows through Caprivi Strip of Namibia and then enters Botswana. Here, the river branches off in countless arms with various islands and finally ends in the sands of Kalahari Desert. This scenery of water, islands and reed is best experienced in a traditional mokoro, a small wooden boat. These boats are mostly made out of the trunks of baobabs. It takes approx. one month to make a boat like this. With low water it is punted through the canals, after the rainy season locals row the boats. Of course, tourists can not go by themselves to the delta, as a foreigner would easily get lost in the channels and in between the islands.
Together with two Australians, I did a day trip with 2 mokoros. For the night, we took our tents to camp on one of the bigger islands. There are no shops and no restaurants for sure, so we had to bring our own supplies.

Chameleon
The journey by mokoro to the island took about 3 hours. It was a great experience to be punted through the canals. These canals are often formed by hippos, which create with their bulky bodies a channel for the small boats. Logically, the punters are always watching out for hippos in the channels and lagoons. Once, a hippo just came out of the water about 10 meters from us, our punters became quite nervous and hurried back. Though hippos are herbivores, but they might become angry if one gets to close to them. It has already happened in the past, that hippos attacked mokoros and passengers. Also with a deadly end. In the afternoon, we went to a hippo pool, where we watched these huge animals from a proper distance.
After a tasty spaghetti dinner with fantasy sauce soon everybody disappeared in the tents. Boating simply makes tired, whether one punts or is just sitting inside.

Okavangodelta
In the middle of the night it suddenly started raining – in an amazing amount! The rainy season should begin, actually, in about 14 days, but anyhow, this downpour looked quite like the start of rainy season! In the morning this weather did not stop. Nevertheless, we went in the rain for our walking safari. Nevertheless, quite unexpectedly, we saw many animals. It is rather different, whether you watch big animals like elephants, buffaloes or giraffes from the secure car or you meet while walking… Because of the rain, we went back to the tents soon. Despite rain jackets we were completely soaked. We hoped that, nevertheless, the rain must stop sometime, so we simply waited for a while in our tents. After two hours, it was sure that it will not stop and that we have to break down the tents in the rain. This is always unpleasant, but in such a downpour it is really bad! And then the journey back by mokoro… As there is nothing to do, you just sit there and it is getting colder and colder. In between we stopped sometimes to get rid of the water from the plastic seats…. On the speed boat for sure it became even colder. I cannot remember that I was so cold before in my whole life!
After 30 minutes on the speed boat we arrived in Maun, where there was coffee and a hot shower waiting for us. We were lucky and could rent safari tents, as ours were completely wet, moreover, it also rained in Maun! These safari tents are very comfortably and have even beds and electricity inside. This was exactly what we needed.