Okavango Delta - Day 1

We had a very early start at 5am after I woke up at 3am and couldn't go back to sleep. We packed all the things from the truck we would need for our wild camp in the Okavango Delta including all our tents, cooking utensils and food for our cook group which I was helping to cook along with fellow travellers, Lauren and Grant.
The safari vehicles we would be using for the trip arrived at 6.30am. We loaded the vehicles with our equipment and set off for the Okavango Delta park which has 18,000 square kilometres of wetlands which varies in size with the seasons and the amount of rain in fat off Angola. We all got wind blasted as the vehicle had no front screen to shield is from the wind on the main road. To our relief, we turned off the road and drove through scrubland into the park for a land safari up until we reached the waters of the Okavango Delta. We didn't see any animals and were happy to arrive at a point by the water where there were a large number of canoes, guides from the local village and a fee groups of tourists waiting to be boated into the Delta. We offloaded all our gear and, with the help of our male and female local guides, we loaded the canoes for our trip. Then it was our turn to climb into the two man canoe. I shared me canoe with Lauren and we positioned ourselves with Lauren in the front and myself further back. Our local guide and boatman was a young man called Nathan. He propelled the boat with a long polenta bit like the boats in Venice and had a very accomplished technique, no doubt practiced since childhood. We set out on a beautiful waterway edge with long grasses and many lilies and lily pads floating on the water. We passed a group of hippos on the open water to the right. We entered narrower waterways again edged with high grasses and covered with water lilies. There was a huge density of bird life to see along the way including, open billed storks, darters (large cormorants), egrets, Jesus birds (that walk on water lilies) and a very large heron. The feeling of moving peacefully through the water was wonderful. The waterways had a very evocative and timeless atmosphere. Time seemed to temporarily stand still as I trailed my fingers in the warm waters that we were pushed through by Nathan. After an hour or so of deeply calming and relaxing boating we arrived at the shore of our bush camp on an island in the waterways. I was disappointed that we couldn't have continued on the waterways filled with life for longer as I could have done that for hours. But with the fierce and hot sun it was probably sensible that we rested in the shade. We put up our tents on the island and then had several hours to rest until we began a walking safari through the bush at 4.30pm. We had nice pasta salad lunch cooked by the cook group. We also had a cooling dip in a shallow area of the waterways safe from crocodiles. This was a wonderful experience to kneel in the warm copper coloured waters to our necks, with small fish in the water beneath us, large snails floating by on the surface, and a riot of birdlife passing overhead including a kite. The sun was very intense and I had to reluctantly retreat when my shoulders started to burn in the water. I watched fellow traveller, Brian, from Englamd try to steer one of the canoes and falllimg nto the water rather dramatically backwards.. spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and playing some football with fellow travellers, Oscar and Simon, recent arrivals from Switzerland, and one of the local guides. I was curious about a bird which had a distinctive descending call and one of the local guides informed me that it was the woodland kingfisher.
The afternoon sun remained very hot as we boarded the canoes to take a short trip across the waterway to where the bush walk would begin. We disembarked from the canoes and soon cam across a large hippo feeding in the grasses near a small lake and then returning to the safety of thewaters. We then walked by a small lake that had a large congregation of hippos some of whom yawned widely as a sign of aggression in the reddening evening sun. We walked on through bush and open grasslands. The scene again seemed timeless and evocative. After some time walking through the scrubland, we saw about six or seven giraffe walking in the distance, also surrounded by a large herd of zebra and some buffalo feeding in the grasses. We watched them for some time through binoculars. A couple of giraffes walked across closer to us. Nathan also gave us a lot of his knowledge about the local plants and animals, their uses and behaviours respectively. For example one cactus like plant could be used for making rope and was growing next to a forty year old termite mound which he told us about. We watched the many animals in this area for quite a while before moving across the scrubland plain and over to an area where we managed to get close to a small herd of zebra who moved together and muzzled each other affectionately. There were other walking groups here which took away from the experience somewhat. We then began to walk back to where we started and passed thr bones and skin of a long dead large male giraffe. We also passed termite mounds that had been dug out by the nocturnal aardvark to a depth of some three to four metres. We also saw the small mounds created by the mole rat. Apparently, it is seen as bad luck locally to see a mole rat. We returned to the lake with the hippos still moving around each other and making their low rumbling calls. We walked back to the canoes for a cooling trip back across the waterway as the sun began to set and turn the light to a golden yellow reflecting beautifully in the water. The day lilies were slowly closing their petals. As we disembarked from the canoes near our camp, a camp fire had been lit and the red flames of the fire were echoed in the red flaming sky as the sun sank beneath the horizon.
It was time for us to cook thr meal for the group. It was quite testing cooking sausages and mash with fried onion, cabbage and gravy. The heat and smoke of the cooking fire combined with the heat of the evening was quite overwhelming. The rest of our fellow travellers sat down by a campfire below the camp were wonderfully entertained with traditional singing and dancing from the local guides. The sounds were very evocative of an older Africa where the sounds of people singing (and it seems that all the local people still sing and dance together naturally and easily) combine seamlessly with the sounds of the frogs and insects in the nearby waterways. After thr well received dinner we emulated the local singers by singing different Beatles songs while we cleared up the dishes. We returned to sit around the camp fire and were wowed by the night sky blazing with infinite stars. The milky way rising above the horizon could be seen clearly defined with shooting stars flashimg through the cleat sky. We mused about how planets out there contained life like the panoply of living beings that surrounded us in the fertile Delta. I retired to my tent with the outside fly sheet rolled up so I could see the stars and feel any breeze to break the stifling heat. I went off to sleep as the frogs and insects created the most fantastic din outside - they seemed as infinite in their multitudes as the stars in our galaxy shining above.Read more