From Maun to the Okavango Delta

We are home, we are safe but most of all we are CLEAN! Who would have thought that that would have been such a priority? For two weeks we had sporadic use of the internet, but mostly I didn’t care. My ears became attuned to bird song, hippo grunts and the intense pervading smell of wild sage. I did keep a journal and I will now draw from that, as it has the immediacy of the impressions as they happened.

Jet lagged and hot, it was bliss to stretch out on a proper bed and sleep. I had no preconceptions about Botswana, just knew that it was a landlocked country about the size of France or Texas and was given over to 80% desert, the Kalahari. Thanks to Alexander McCall Smith and his ‘Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ books I had developed an affectionate affiliation with Madame Ramotswe and her friend from the Speedy Motors Garage. So it was nice to be welcomed at the hotel by a young woman ‘of traditional build’ who introduced herself as: ‘My name is Precious and please help yourself to a glass of orange squash.’

Bibi, our professional guide, had us up with the cockerels the following morning and on the road very smartly. Our safari vehicle was like an open sided truck and our luggage was attached to a squeaky trailer behind. Before leaving Maun we called into a petrol station and were served by a fetching young woman in a red ski hat, big parka jacket and gold ballet slippers. She was quite flirtatious and had an infectious laugh.

The countryside zoomed past, winter fields and leafless trees, colours of sand and pale gold grasses. We saw cylindrical houses daubed in mud with thatched roofs huddled behind twigged fences. Everything seemed brushed and tidy and the kilometres whizzed past. We swerved to avoid donkeys, goats and cows, and I saw a group of small children and a baby goat in silhouette, sitting under a tree. It was all so domestic and peaceful.

We did have a puncture and I was secretly glad as it meant a welcome visit to the African bush, with spikey acacia burrs drawing blood from my unprotected feet. I was glad of the ‘comfort stop’ and being so close to the trees and seeing the collection of weaver birds’ nests hanging like straw baskets from the branches. The heat was burning on my back.

Further on, we came to a dead cow, red and bleeding by the roadside. Clustered beside it were about 40 vultures, their wings giving the impression of Presbyterian ministers in their long black gowns, their heads all jutting out in unison. They might have been paying their respects, though I think they were waiting for a sign, of ‘let’s eat’. It seemed so sinister. Suddenly I felt as though I really was in Africa.

Three hundred and seventy-five kilometres from the start of our journey we approached a small township with signs advertising the ‘Save Me Restaurant’ and ‘The Stunning Salon’ and a shop that sold ‘God Knows’. The car came off the tarmac and hit sand. We drove towards the water and there before us was the mighty Okavango River and our very own houseboat which would be home for the next three nights. Cabins were basic and ensuite.

From the decks we watched the riverbank slip by, slowly, slowly, and the river widened and the tall grasses shielded all other signs of life. We passed crocodiles lazing on the banks, some small and slender with bright green and yellow scales and some very large and very very long. I was a little disconcerted when our driver moored the boat with its nose embedded in a sand bank. I thought it looked like a perfect welcome gangplank for a hungry croc. After dinner we retired early and duly sprayed our cabins with a good dose of ‘DOOM’ to kill any mosquitos and bugs. We slept, alone on the delta, miles and miles from any civilization.

In the morning we took the small launch and left the houseboat, and returned down the river to where we had set off and got into the truck. We were headed for the intriguing and sacred World Heritage Site of the Tsodilo Hills. The San Bushman believe that this was the site of the first creation and painted an astonishing 4000 rock paintings to celebrate this. The journey to the hills was sandy once we left the tarmac reminding us that Botswana is so covered by the Kalahari desert. Many years ago I watched a film called ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’ about a bushman who found a coke bottle dropped from an over head aeroplane. The bottle caused him no end of speculation as to what it was and how he could get rid of it.

Today our guide was Bo, a member of the San Bushmen tribe and he spoke in their wonderful way, clicking with his tongue.

Walking along he pointed out the ‘paper bark tree’ that was so important to the bushmen.

For in spring time, tubers at the end of the tree’s roots become the main delicacy of certain pupae. The men would dig these grubs up and squeeze the poisonous juice from the bodies and coat the ends of their arrows. Then they would shoot an animal, and force it to run so that the poison would enter the blood stream and not into the meat. I absorbed all this with such passion.  Who knows when one might need some powerful assassin poison! The branches of this tree are also very good for rubbing to ignite a flame.

He also chatted about the baobab tree, and we learnt that from those roots, ropes can be made and the seeds when ground down make very good coffee. My goodness at this rate I might be able to survive!

Our mission after the small tutorials was to walk up the Female mountain (divorced from the Male mountain a hundred thousand years ago) and see the rock paintings, depicting giraffe, eland, rhino and elephant. The dyes they used were mixed with animal fat, urine and ash. Powerful stuff to have lasted this long.

Laurens Van der Post visited the site in 1965 and scrambled up the rocks to photograph a depiction of a giraffe. That night he found his camera had seized up and he was told that his intrusion had made the spirits of the mountain angry. So to appease the angry spirits he wrote a letter of apology and put it in a bottle and presented it to the mountain. Amazingly his camera miraculously worked. Laurens had named this sacred site ‘The Louvre of Africa’.

We climbed in the heat of the midday sun (as only the British can do) and came to the top of the mountain and gazed over the plains. I could see what a good strategic place it was for tribes of yore to hang out.

There were huge caves for shelter, and even a natural water borehole.

The scramble down was downright dangerous. I spent most of it on my derriere, clawing from tree root to rock hold. It was a miracle that none of us slipped or sprained anything. The spirits must have been happy with us, even though we photographed the wonderful etchings.

The return to the boat was a welcome haven. There was a breeze and we sailed further up the river. We came to ground, the gangplank again in place for any intruders and we found that we had been joined by a group of hippos. They grunted and growled all through Bibi’s evening chat. I listened to a brief synopsis of Botswana, how its wealth comes from diamonds, cattle and tourism. The Orapa mine is the largest diamond mine in the world. I listened to the love story of a black lawyer, educated in England and who fell in love with a white girl whom he married. His folks back in Botswana were furious, and would not let him return. Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams were exiled for five years until he returned to Botswana and became its first president in 1964 and led the country to independence in 1966. Now in 2016 his son, Ian Khama is the current president, half black and half white and the country is stable and its economy is growing. Nice love story before bed.

The next morning saw us off again on the little launch, this time steered by Bibi, carefully manoeuvring through the hippos.  We photographed their great heads and twitching ears and listened to their sonorous growls and bellows.

Bibi was quite emphatic about giving them a wide berth. Apparently they are very dangerous and not to be trusted. He revved up the motor when he saw two heads pop up behind us and four others dive and reappear on the other side of the boat. They are only good to look at from afar!

John was in heaven as Bibi pointed out the birds we passed. There were sacred ibis,

black egrets looking as though they were squatting under umbrellas as their heads were down foraging in the water beneath their spread wings. We saw a goliath heron, huge and mighty, yet supported on such spindly legs. I was seriously impressed when it took off and we saw its wingspan. It looked like a small aeroplane.

We saw yellow billed storks, pied kingfishers, African darters or snake birds and the exquisite metallic turquoise colour of the cape glossy starling.

Fish eagles perched on branches and some even were poised on the river bank,

and the very very rare Pels fish owl that ornithologists come to the Okavango Delta specially to see, posed on a tree just for us. It is only ever seen here and we were very lucky.

Crocodiles sunned themselves, egrets showed off their yellow feet, and white breasted cormorants stood amidst a family of helmeted guinea foul.

We came back and the afternoon was hot and we rested. Our cabin door was open and several wire-tailed swallows came to perch on the boat’s matting.

The river glittered and I fell into a deep sleep.

In the evening we set off for a sunset cruise on the small launch but this time in the opposite direction. The malachite kingfisher flashed its colours and flitted to the bank where scores of bee-eaters rested on a tree beside the nesting holes of the pied kingfisher.

We left them to it, and putted on down river, passing the crocs with their terrible smiles whilst lurking beside the tall reeds.

Our guide, Randal, stopped the motor and all was still. We savoured the silence and the quiet river. But then we heard crunching noises, grasses being pulled and he cocked his head, ‘Elephant,’ he whispered. To our horror he manoeuvred the boat into a small channel surrounded by dead trees and papyrus grasses. Randal jumped out and waded through the mud and clambered up to the grasses themselves.

We all suddenly felt alone and vulnerable. What if a hippo topples us? What if a croc was lurking nearby? To cheer myself up I took an arty shot of the setting sun.

Then Randal returned and he revved up the engine and we escaped the potential death trap and out we came on the the wide delta again. I felt calmer and was content to look at the birds, but Randal was on a mission. He brought the boat upon to the sandbank and cut the engine and we listened. The scrunchy noises grew louder and suddenly the grasses parted and out of the feathery papyrus stepped my first massive bull elephant. He came close, then the grasses parted and three others appeared. They all stood, so majestic with their colossal ears spread wide and it seemed as though they were saying, ‘Welcome my friends – welcome to Africa.’

We packed up that night, as we would be leaving the Okavango Delta at dawn the next day. John ‘doomed’ the room, and we lay listening to the river noises. Sometime in the dead of night I woke up and heard a sonorous growl then a grunt and the boat rocked. ‘A hippo,’ I thought, ‘Thank God I am not in a canoe.’