Okavango Delta

After the San Bushmen camp, we headed on out into Botswanna and towards the Okavango Delta, a marshland full of crocs and hippos that reminded me of the everglades in Florida. The two nights we were there we overnighted away from the truck and any other conveniences.

We used small little canoes and the locals, called polers (very much like the people pushing gondalas in Venice), pushed our boats through the weeds and the water towards our first camp site. It rained during the boat ride there and I got considerably soaked.

Our personal guides name was Esbey, and he was very knowledgable about the various types of plants and anminals we saw, yet his English was still lacking a bit. After we set up camp, we attempted to go on a boat ride to do a nature walk, but bad weather prompted us to turn around and enjoy a thorough night of Bush camping. Much to my displeasure, we hadn't seen any hippos yet, but we could certainly hear their growls in the distance.

The second day we got up early and boated to do a nature walk. This was extensively in the bush (i.e. long pants and close toed shoes a must). We saw wild elephants, zebras, warthogs, wildabeast, and baboons on our journey. When we were looking out at the zebra, I noticed (what I thought at the time) was a bloody stick to my left. Turns out it was a half eaten Python. Ground hornbills snatch up pythons to great heights and drop them to kill them, then eat their insides. This one had been ripped to pieces below the head.

Our second night we went to a proper camp (our tents had beds! and spiders...) and enjoyed a relaxing evening. I even learned how to pole from our poler, and standing up doing it is a lot harder than it looks. Imagine taking a big stick and pushing yourself along trying not to hit anything or anyone. Yeah.

It rained horribly that night, and Kait almost got attacked by a spider. But all is well.