Our journey to Southern Africa - part 4:
By Marius Westgard Erichsen
Botswana:
Okawango
Oddball's camp - or Palm Island Luxury Lodge as they call it!
When we arrived at the airstrip at 16:30, the first thing we saw was an elephant blocking the river. This prevented the supplies to be brought to the camp by mokoro, which is a canoe carved out of from a log or one piece of wood. The supplies did not arrive until 7o'clock. From the airstrip we walked 20 minutes to the camp. When we got there we moved into "our" lovely treehouse, and looked around a little. The Okawango River becomes a delta and then disappears in the savanna, it never reaches the ocean. A major part of the Delta is now National Park. That means nature reserve, where the animals have rights, and human beings are not allowed to carry firearms or other weapons, or in any way harm the animals. When we where there it had not rained much, if at all, so it was not much water there. The camp was nice and shady, it was green in spite of the dry weather. We also had a one hour walk with our guides outside the camp. We were told that if we saw leopard we must not look it in the eyes, if we got a rhino or an elephant running after us we should run zig- zag, and if we met lions we were to stand still until it moved away, this would take maximum two hours!! We saw some animals: elephants, antelopes and a big flock of buffaloes, but none of them so close that they represented any kind of danger. Antelopes are beautiful.
Friday December 19.
In the morning we woke from of what sounded like an orchestra of pans! Well it was an elephant being chased away, it had pulled down a palm tree. The staff knew that the elephant would come back for its food, so they cut up the tree into pieces and moved it out of the camp. When we had eaten breakfast we went out with the mokoros. The guides were with us of course, we had to guides at our disposal, and were not allowed to go outside the camp alone. Our guides were Rips and Doc, Doc seemed to be the leader. They were very nice and clever, and we felt really safe with them. Hope they are all right, and just as good to other tourists! We could not go to far with the mokoros because there was an elephant barring the river. We walked around for some hours and saw a lot of animals. In the middle of the day we had to go back to the camp, because it was too hot to walk around. In the afternoon we went out again. Now we asked the guides find lions, and they said they would do their best. We followed lion tracks for about an hour, then finally we found them, 10- 20 lionesses out hunting. (We don't know exactly how many there were because they were hiding in the high grass, but we could se some heads and tails). We walked over the plain on a path where the grass was not so high, and to the other side. The guides told us to stay close to them, because they knew the lions were still there. Mom had obviously not understood that, she thought the lions had moved on Suddenly we heard a lion roar very close to us. Mom almost started running, but Rips caught her (had she started running, the lion would have eaten her), then we saw the lion, it was only a few meters away from me. After that the lions moved on and we started to walk towards the camp. Shortly after we returned to the camp the elephant that had been there in the morning, came back. (As we had learned by then, it had been there all night. When do elephants sleep?) It did not want to eat outside the camp, so it pulled the whole tree back into the camp again. There was nothing we could do, except to watch out for it.
Saturday December 20.
This is the day we left Okawango, we were supposed to take the plane back to Maun at
13:45, so we got up early in the morning (5 or 6 am) to have a last trip out of the camp.
When we woke up there were a lot of baboons on the roof, they were trying to break open a
melon, which some idiot (sorry, tourist) had left outside the chalet. They dropped the
melon from the roof, and it was crushed against the ground. That's the way baboon's
prepare a meal. Then they started fighting about who was going to eat it. When we were
ready to eat breakfast, the elephant came and barred the way out of our treehouse. Mom
started screaming that the elephant was back, it turned out that everybody knew it but us.
When the elephant moved away we ate breakfast and went out with our guides, we saw a lot
of animals, among else, kudus. the kudu is one of the biggest of
the antelopes. This was a nice end of our stay in the Okawango Delta. When we came back to
the camp we packed and got ready to leave. A few hours later we started walking towards
the airstrip and took the plane back to Maun.
Pictures of things we saw
Maun
Here we checked in at Crocodile camp. It lay by a, for the moment completely dry river, (all, or most, rivers in the area were season rivers), 8 km from Maun "center". The camp was once built by a crocodile hunter, we must presume he hunted in, or by, the river. We rented an African styled concrete chalet, with concrete floors, a not very clean mosquito net, and a fan I the roof. The roof was made from bamboo canes, and did not reach the walls, obviously to get good air circulation at hot times. A lot of lizards enjoyed the space on the top of the wall, where we could see them sneaking around in the light form the outdoor lamp, when we went to sleep. For dinner we had croc tail, it looked like fish, and tasted like it too, not very good fish though, cod is better.
Sunday December 21.
When I woke up in the morning I felt sick, and vomited a couple of times. (Good we stayed in a chalet with a bathroom, and not at the camp ground!) Therefore we did not try to get to Kasane by bus as planned. It seemed to be hard anyway, we were not able to make sure there was ordinary route busses from Nata and northwards. We understood there would be an aircraft for Kasane, but no. Instead we booked on a plane to Victoria Falls. I was told not to show that I was sick, I failed, I vomited on the floor in the airport. Since mom could not follow me to the gents, she just stood up and screamed. Most of the people there did not seem to care, but an Australian named Mark helped me at the toilet. I did not realize much of what was going on around me, but we got on the plane. I vomited there too.
Go to next part: Victoria Falls
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MWE 04.12.98