To the Okavango and Beyond
Maun: Gateway to the Delta
Our next stop is Maun, known as the Gateway to the Delta. It's a popular tourist destination, and has its own tiny international airport.
We're staying two nights here in what seems like luxury, with hot showers, a bar and a swimming pool. We spend the rest of the day shopping and lazing around the camp.
After much debate and working out finances, we decide we can afford a 45 minute flight over the Delta in a light aircraft. We book for the following afternoon. The plane takes five passengers, and we have to pay for all five seats, which means we can take two of the staff. We leave it to them to decide which two. After some good laughs as each one states his own case convincingly, we leave them to it, recommending them to flip a coin. We go off to test the pool. The cold water is fabulous in this hot weather.
After another wonderful KB-cooked meal, we check out the bar. The men become engrossed in football, while Lene and I chat to the barman and to each other.
The following morning sees us on an increasingly damp road which soon threads its way between flood pools. Our destination is the mokoro landing stage. Mokoros are the Delta's tourist magnet. Built to the same design as the original dugout canoes used by centuries of fishermen, most of them are now built of fibre glass. We round a corner, and we 're transported from desolate swampland to a busy tourist centre, with a winding queue of colourfully dressed people, young, old and intermediate, chatting in many languages. The queue turns out to be for the single inadequate loo, with droves of people afraid of being caught short during a day on the water. I skip it; after all, their are islands with good bush cover.
Our mokoros have been pre-booked, and Rex disappears to find our guide for the day. After a short wait, Lene and Erik set off with the guide, an elderly man with a calm Mandela-like face, poling the mokoro. Sam and I follow with his assistant, a youngster in his late teens. He doesn't speak much English. Sam, Zimbabwaen like me, only knows a few words of Tswana and I know none, so communication is limited.
I'm a little disappointed. I'd expected the banks to be teeming with game, but at this season, with heavy rains and water everywhere throughout the country, the game has moved to the sweeter vegetation inland. I wave goodbye to my expectations and settle down to enjoy a peaceful day of boating. The mokoro glides silently between reeds that soon obscure the view. The calm lapping of the water is soothing and waterlilies are plentiful, coloured in exquisite shades of white, yellow and lilac. In fact, life's pretty good. So long as we don't meet a hippo with a grudge. Sam takes a turn at poling, much to the amusement of the professional. It's not that easy, and needs a good sense of balance.
I'm surprised at the lack of birdlife in the interior. Several brave waterfowl mingled with the noisy rabble of tourists, vendors and guides at the waterfront, but here there are none. Just us, the reeds, the waterlilies and the rhythmic splash of the pole. The Delta is vast and the other tourists have taken different routes. Lene and Eirk are presumably ahead, but they're hidden by the reeds. Just us and a world of water.
The guide's assistant beaches the mokoro on an island perhaps a kilometre long and half as wide, where the rest of the group are waiting for us. The river vegetation gives way to trees and grassland in the centre, and the guide says animals often swim or wade across to graze here. Today the island's empty.
We walk to the far end, warily in case some predator lurks in the undergrowth. Our guide has a deep knowledge of every plant, bird and insect, naming each and telling us a little of its lifestyle. He is the descendant of many generations of mokoro polers. His stories go back to a time long before tourists brought money to the area, and the people lived as fishermen in harmony with nature.
With a thoughtful glance at the long grass and bushy patches which could hide anything, I ask the guide what he would actually do if we met a lion, as his ancestors must have done many times in the past.
"A lion will not usually harm you if you keep calm," he says.
Sounds good, but the word 'usually' leaves room for improvement. I ask for reassurance.
"Only if it is a lioness who thinks you are a danger to her cubs," he tells us.
So what would he do if he's confronted with an angry lioness? I'm not sure if his answer is a piece of ancient bush wisdom that actually works, or a plausible theory made up on the spot, but here's his tactic. One by one the group should slowly walk backwards and find cover, eventually leaving the tour leader alone, eyeballing the outraged mum. Mum will then silently lead her cubs away. And the theory behind it? This is the way lions hunt. One lion will confront the prey while the others disappear and regroup behind, attacking the unfortunate creature from the rear. Mother Lion's not about to take the chance of this happening to her babies. It sounds good in theory. I hope I never have to put it into practice.
We have lunch a short distance inland, far enough from the water to make it unlikely that we'll become lunch for a passing crocodile.
The return trip is uneventful - no hippos, crocs or angry lionesses. We're now running late for our flight, so we don't return to camp to change clothes as we'd planned.
Sam and Rex have nominated themselves for the two spare seats. At first we're concerned that this isn't fair on KB, who we've all grown fond of. Then we learn that KB's already done the flight three times. Rex has been once, and this is Sam's first time.
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On the runway we meet our pilot and the plane, a Gippsland Airvan. Soon we're airborne over Maun, a sprawling town, much bigger than we'd realised. We head north, following the course of a river, and then the wetlands are below us. The Delta is a vast fifteen thousand square kilometre area of waterways intersected by islands. It stretches as far as the eye can see, an intricate pattern of lighter and darker green, with here and there the sparkling white of salt deposits and deep copper channels where clear water shows the underlying mud. Now and then we see hippos or elephants grazing and fly lower for a closer look.
All too soon our time is up, and we return to Maun in high spirits.
Back at camp, we're sad to learn that the safari company is swapping KB onto another trip, and we'll have a new cook. Quite apart from the fact that his food is fantastic, we'll miss him badly. Although he doesn't say much, when he does speak it's either hilarious,or else shows an unusual perspective on people and events; a kind of wisdom that is uniquely KB. We threaten mutiny or kidnapping, but KB leaves anyway, and we get Morgan instead. Morgan's a nice guy and his food's great - but we miss KB.
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