Okavango Unplugged

I have to admit, it's been wonderful to unplug from the world for the past week.  No Facebook, no work emails, no news headlines, no internet.  It took about two days to really let go of those habits and stop thinking about work and to-do lists.  But when you're in the Okavango Delta, you have to choice but to "log off". . . and it's completely freeing.

But now, I have to somehow encapsulate all of the activities from the past seven days into this blog post.  I'll have to break up the journey: one post about Botswana/Namibia and one post about Zimbabwe.

I flew into Maun on April 6 and met up with my safari tour group on April 7.  There were nine of us: three from Germany, two from Australia, two from Italy, one from Canada, and me.  We flew from Maun airport to a landing strip in the middle of the Okavango Delta.

The 6-seater plane and me as the co-pilot (ha ha!)

This was the first time I flew in a small plane like that and I can't say that I enjoyed it.  The Dramamine kicked in halfway through the 40-minute flight and then it was slightly better.

For two days, we stayed in a very nice camp that had large permanent tents and was surrounded by wildlife.  During this stay, we went on a walking safari (and saw elephants and hippos), took a three-hour game drive around the area (saw a lot of animals, but not a lot of big game), and went for a Mokoro trip (local dug-out canoe) through the waterways.

 

Most of my tour group and one of our guides

 

Sunset on the walking safari

 Morning Mokoro ride 

(It was unusually cold that morning, hence the jacket and scarf.)

The third day of the tour started at 4:00am because we had to travel from the delta to the Namibian/Botswana border near Chobe National Park.  So we drove for two hours, then rode on a small boat through the canals for an hour, then got in another car for an hour, then another (bigger) boat for two hours, and then finally the tour "adventure" truck for the remaining eight hours.  It was a long day.

 

Speeding through the delta canals, looking for crocodiles

We only briefly cut through the Caprivi Strip of Namibia because the roads are better there than in Botswana.  I never actually went sightseeing in Namibia, and I certainly didn't go to the desert region. (That's in the southwest region, which was the opposite side from where I was.)  We stayed at another camp site (permanent tents) that night and headed to Chobe National Park in Botswana the next morning.

Our game drive through Chobe was definitely a highlight of the trip.  We saw a herd of about 40 elephants (crazy!!), giraffes, zebras, impalas, a leopard, lions, wildebeest, warthogs, baboons, tons and tons of birds, and a few other animals I can't think of right now.

 

 

 

After the game drive, we went for a sunset cruise and saw elephants playing the water (which was hilarious), as well as hippos and more crocodiles.

 

That roughly sums up my time in Botswana and Namibia.  The blog post for Zimbabwe will happen in a few days. I'm leaving Victoria Falls today to go visit a friend in Harare (the capital).