Sit Back In My Dream, Just Drifting Downstream

The world's only inland delta, the Okavango Delta is home to every species of wildlife you'd expect to find in Southern Africa. Unfortuantely for us, this year is the most flooded the Delta has been since 1921, and, as a result, a lot of the islands the animals normally walk around on were submerged beneath the surface. As a result, it was nearly impossible to find any animals, since the islands we visited didn't have many and the islands are hard to travel between since they're so far apart. That said, we still did see quite a few animals - elephants, buffalos, giraffes, hippos, and a few antelopes. However, most of these we saw from the air, and we didn't get a chance to experience the wildlife upclose. That said, the two and a half days we spent in the Okavango were among the most rugged shit I've ever done.

After one and a half LONG travel days from Cape Town to Maun (in Botswana), I was feeling really beat. Despite knowing I really should have taken a nap, there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to fly over the Delta in a helicopter. We were intially told it would be $60 USD to do the flight, which would last 45 minutes. However, when we arrived, the company told us it would be $65 - or, if we wanted to pay in Rand (which we did, of course, since no one brought US Dollars), it'd be 565 Rand, the equivalent of about $75. After feeling like I was nickel-and-dimed all over South Africa during my travels with my brother, I was furious to hear from the get-go that the same would continue. Yeah, I understand, "they need it more than I do", but when it happens every single place you go it gets really frustrating. That said, I wasn't going to not do the flight. Our flight lasted exactly 45 minutes and took us further than we would be able to travel in the coming days on our makoros (dugout canoes, more to be explained later), and gave us a sense of a. how vast the Delta was and b. that animals really did live there, even if we wouldn't have the chance to see any while we were on our makoros. We saw all the above animals I mentioned - elephants, buffalos, giraffes, hippos, and antelope. Watching the sun set from the helicopter / once we landed on the ground - wow. My first HUGE African sunset. They're not like that in Cape Town. You know those stereotypical Lion King sunsets? Yeah, it was one of those. And we had them every single night on the trip. Unbelievable.

An aerial view of the Okavango Delta from the helicopter

We woke early the next morning and traveled to the makoro station an hour and a half outside of Maun. We left our bags behind and brought only our day packs filled with our toiletries, sleeping bag, a 5 liter jug of water, and a bathing suit (no changes of clothes - we wore the same thing the whole time), and said goodbye to the real world: electricity, toilets, and unlimited water. I, of course, brought my Tempurpedic pillow - how could I go without it for two days? The makoro station was a bit of a clusterfuck - everyone seemed really confused, the makoro guides who were to push us through the Delta for the next two days, called pullers, barely spoke any English, and most of them were really stoned - you could smell the weed through the bushes and watch them come out from behind them giggling. What else would you expect them to do when they're floating down the river and pushing around loud Americans all day?

The makoros we boarded at the docking station

Riding in the mokoros was a pretty interesting experience. You sit two people in each one, plus one puller who stands in the back and pulls you through the river with their giant sticks. The mokoro barely sits on top of the water - your ass is below the water level and if you reach your arm out straight it is about a foot and a half above the water. The pullers push you through the water, but often times you couldn't even tell that you're traveling through water - reeds rise up to 6 feet above your head and you feel like you're traveling through a field of tall grass. Mad spiders live on these reeds, and pretty much every time you go through a patch of them at least one spider will get in the mokoro. The biggest one that jumped into ours had a body about an inch wide - freaking huge - but most of them are tiny spiders that you can just flick out.

More on the guides - they spoke very little English, which made the little amount of English they did speak hilarious. The main guide, named Pilot, had one of the most interesting English vocabularies I've ever heard. His favorite phrase, which he called the golden rule, was "More chances of talk, less chances of sight". Seems pretty self explanatory. We didn't get to "see" the animals, instead we would "meet" them. In the mornings, he told us to take a "nature walk" instead of going to the bathroom. When we would travel to a different island to go on a game walk, we were actually traveling to a different "planet". He told us not to wear bright colors like "green, yellow, and pinky". Pilot seemed very knowledgable, despite his lack of English, and I can only imagine how much of a baller guide he would be if I could speak Setswana.

We arrived at our campsite, if you can call it that, after two hours of being pulled downstream. We had to fit 30 people (including the pullers) in a space that was comfortable for about 8 people and no tents. We managed to fit everyone, barely, and as a result our campsite had a lot of character. Our toilet - a hole in the ground - was about 20 feet from the middle of the camp site, and sent beautiful fumes through the campsite always. Luckily we didn't spend too much time at the campsite ever - we were either out doing game walks, on makoros going to do the game walks, or chilling in the swimming hole. Which brings me to my next point - the swimming hole was grimy as hell. It was really muddy, full of lillypads and reeds, and was downright gross. I spent most of my time trying to learn how to pull the makoros, which, I promise, is a hell of a lot harder than it looks. After about 3 hours of makoro-ing around I finally started to get the hang of it, but lost it all the next day and needed to relearn.

Our game walks were pretty uneventful - we saw a few elephants and a few antelope, but nothing up very close. My favorite part of the walks was the makoro rides over to them - it's just so peaceful sitting in these things, being pushed around, and hearing the sounds of nature and nothing else around you. Sitting in the makoros, you can almost feel the curvature of the earth - probably due in part to there not being a single cloud in the sky. In fact, the sky was so blue that it was almost white on the horizons. The sun was huge - the setting sun even larger - and temperatures reached over 100 F by 11 am. In the summer months, temperatures go as high as 140 F with high humidity - it makes Washington DC seem like paradise. It's really impossible to capture the essence of the Okavango Delta in a picture, a description, or a Planet Earth video - it's something you just need to experience.

Our last night in the Delta, we were treated to a performance by our guides. They sang traditional Botswanan songs, along with dances, and it really was special to watch. Of course, we couldn't receive such a performance without showing them some of our own culture, and, as a group, we performed - a very loose interpretation of the word performed - such American staples as "Buttercup", "Lean on Me", "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", and ended with a freestyle by one of the kids on our trip, featuring a good old boots-n-skirts beatbox by yours truly. The guides seemed to love the beatboxing - I don't think they'd ever heard it before - and a few of them even tried to join and and started dancing around like clowns. It really was a special experience.

I'm not sure where I'm going at this point in this entry - I presume that my other two entries will be rambling quite like this one. It's really hard to put all my memories and experiences into a coherent flow, but I'll try my best. Hopefully you got somewhat of an idea of what the Okavango Delta was like - though, keep in mind, nothing you see or read will possibly do it justice. A lot of people (read: Jappy girls) on our trip bitched that it was too rugged for them and that we didn't see enough animals, but I thought it was a great start to our trip - very chilled, very authentic, and very not touristy. Everything I love. More to come on Chobe and Vic Falls later.

This photo is in no way, shape, or form doctored. I promise.