Okavango Delta, Botswana

We flew there in this airplane.
John had the co-pilot seat.

The Okavango Delta in Botswana is very different terrain than Chobe National Park's savannah.   The Delta is formed by the Okavango River as it flows from the mountains, but dries up before it reaches the ocean.  It is about 100 square miles of water one to five feet deep.  It has very clear water - with grasses growing everywhere.  In drier seasons, you can sometimes drive to the camp we were staying at.  At this time of year, the only mode of ground transportation in the delta is by water.   We flew a tiny 6-passenger airplane in.  

Our mokoros await

We  chose the camp we did because it was considered more traditional.  We stayed at Oddballs, one of the few base camps left that use all mokoros - dug-out canoes from tree trunks- as transport.  We used the mokoros to go to and from various unpopulated islands where we camped and did daily walking safaris.  

Our guides stood in the back of the mokoro (like a gondolier) and poled us through the grasses.  Sometimes they had to push us through - the reeds were so thick.  Sometimes we had to get out and walk - the water was so shallow.  When being poled, you sit on the floor of the dugout canoe basically at waterline -- with only a few inches of clearance on each side.  I thought they looked like floating beanpods - and they felt about that stable, too.

John and Cheryl went on ahead

Because the reeds and grasses are one to four feet tall, you actually can't see much when sitting in them except straight up or straight ahead.  We knew there could be hippos and crocs in the water, but we never saw them.  Our guides took wide berths around them - except for one day.  

Many times, we even lost sight of them

The skin of a hippo is very sensitive.  They can't handle sun, as they easily get sunburned.  Therefore, hippos spend most of the daytime in the deepest water of the main channel.  At night, they become active and in our camp, you could hear them out chomping grasses nearby.  One day, Jim and I and our guide went on a day excursion to an island.  We started out in one direction, but the guide saw hippos in the channel we were taking, and turned around.  We couldn't go that way.  We went another way to the island where we spent about two hours walking and learning about different plants and animals there.  Then, we started back to camp.  

In the meantime, it had clouded over.  The hippos started getting active.  Because you are low in the mokoro, you can't see the hippos - and if you could, you'd be way too close!  But we could hear them.   They were grunting (like pigs) and moving through the grasses we were poling in,  but we couldn't tell if they were ten yards away or fifty.  For about 20 minutes, we poled through an area where they were active, and I think we held our breath the whole time.   (I don't easily get scared, but both Jim and I were very uneasy.)

That night, we asked our guide if he had ever had a guest hurt by a hippo.   He said he hadn't, but his uncle worked at a camp where an American couple had been out in a mokoro with a guide when a hippo suddenly emerged from the water, flipped the mokoro up, and snapped the woman in half as she came down - killing her.  I was glad that I heard this story after we got safely back to camp.