Okavango Delta, Botswana
05/14/10
At 5:45 a.m. I left my tent and my first sight was hungover Bob who resembled a lovesick yak. At about 1 a.m. he fumbled in his tent boozed-out cursing and screaming “Shush!” presumably to himself. I had lost one earplug slapping myself in the face in an attempt to kill our resident mosquito. This meant Bob’s bellows woke me up mid-sleep when I was having a kickass dream (Thanks for anti-malaria pills) about kicking it with the Ninja Turtles. When I saw Bob, I wanted to transform him into Pinocchio, duct tape his head to his crotch, then force him to tell lies. ‘Say! Say!’….’Okay! My name is Oprah Winfrey!’
After packing our small backpacks with dull colours to avoid attracting the attention of wild animals in the Okavango Delta, we pulled down tents and threw our large bags in the back of the van, leaving most of our supplies behind. We were ready for the Okavango Delta, real camping without any source of electricity or running water.
Facing sideways in the giant open bed of an old Mercedes truck, condensation dripped off the army green roof onto our pants and shoulders. Boxie-boo cuddled in shivering, then farted, following with her usual giggling.
For an hour, we passed village children waving in blue uniforms. The houses were small square boxes of concrete, some no larger than a shed. Fences were made with fallen branches balanced together with dug holes and loosely-tied wire. Most locals were happy to see us, except for one old lady. When she saw our truck passed, she waved her hands by her face as if knocking away annoying flies.
Switching off-road towards the delta, the homes changed from concrete to mud mixed with straw. Boxie-boo, who can sleep almost anywhere, woke up from the rattling of metal and the intoxicated movements of the truck. The big beast knocked from side to side so hard we had to be careful not to collide hides.
“Is that a bridge?” Bob asked, looking forward to two dirt hills with thin logs laid across. Minutes later, we crossed a 100-feet of water so deep the tires were hidden underwater. Then David told us we were lost and we stopped at a small village for directions.
After 30 minutes of constantly flailing back and forth, feeling like a teeter-tooter ridden by two obese kids on speed, we arrived at the delta. The waterfront was lined with narrow dugout canoes called mokoros. Many were filled with straw. Others were being drained of water with cups, doing little to put our mind at ease knowing we were set to cross hippo territory. Meanwhile, others were being repaired by locals hammering the insides with rocks. We used our thin tent mattresses as backrests elevated on our bags and dropped in, laid back in the unemployment position of a couch potato.
Our “poler” -as he called the job - introduced himself as Seven. Using a long pole, he pushed us across the shallow brown water. Water-spiders scattered in all directions. The late morning sun heated our bodies. A cool and comforting breeze brushed across bright yellow flowers, as we followed many trails in the water through tall grasses. Seven pointed at distant hippos and small frogs, sending us smoothly towards our distant campsite for 1.5 hours.
“You look relaxed, David,” Boxie-boo said. He sat with his hands behind his head, leaned back and stretching his toes.
“Yes, I think I’ll take a nap and scare the hippos with my snoring.”
We arrived at camp at around noon with nothing for us to do beyond setting up our tents. Why the 5:45 a.m. wake up? I did not know. We were introduced to our hole-in-the-ground toilet, told to be careful of hippos, then took turns driving the mokoros. We were only able to turn smoothly in one direction, which left Evan, Bob and I circling and the locals laughing.
Bob proved to be the friendliest American, Evan in second, so I could no longer be mad at Bob for his 1 a.m. wake-up call of cursing. After all, his Survivor TV show bandanna amused the crap out of all of us, leading to jokes about immunity competitions.
On our bush walk at 4:30 p.m., we saw herding ostriches, a giant bees nest, zebras and a few giant beetles, returning to our campsite in darkness. The one-and-a-half-hour walk was relaxing, lined with a purple and orange sunset over tall grasses that appeared black, swaying like shadows in the darkness.
“If someone told me I’d be taking a pee in a hole with my son holding a flashlight, I would have told them they’re nuts,” Choppa-chaw said, while I politely looked away and scanned the bushes for the neighbouring baboons. Hippos across the water let out bassy oinks, sounding like giant pigs on steroids. Above us, the Milky Way and stars blended together in a web of light, while distant animals roared, surrounding our campsite like rolling thunder.
That’s all for now.
Thank you for visiting Page59.com.
