into the delta

We had another early start today. But I woke up easily enough feeling surprisingly chipper. Today we were headed into the Okavango Delta for an overnight mokoro trip. 

Welcome to the delta.

First, we climbed into a motorboat with Julie and Lisa (two older women who quickly became fast friends of ours) and zoomed through the “outer” delta, stopping occasionally to look at some of the many birds that call the delta home. 

Podge, Trevor, Katie and I on the delta.

We arrived at Boro Village, where a local cooperative organizes all of the mokoro trips into the delta. A mokoro is a shallow canoe that is traditionally hewn out of an ebony or sausage-log tree and is propelled by a poler who stands at the back of the canoe using an ngashi, a long pole made from the mogonono tree. Some of the mokoros are now made out of fiberglass though, because international conservationists want to save the trees the mokoros are hewn from. These fiberglass boats on average can cost P6000 (that’s a lot of money). 

Podge in a fiberglass mokoro. The one next to her is made out of wood.

We met our guides, Martin, James and KT and were poled out into the smooth waters of the delta. The ride through the delta was breath taking. Our polers propelled us effortlessly through the lagoons and intricate channels. It was so quiet, so calm and so peaceful.

Our polers navigated us to an island in the middle of the delta where we made camp. We pitched our tent, made some PB&J’s for lunch and then went swimming. The water felt so good and I would have been happy to stay there all day. 

Our campsite!

While swimming, I had a real “wow” moment. I was swimming in the middle of the Okavango Delta. The whole region was just so pristine, so serene, so untouched. 

But the coolest part of the swimming hole was that our polers let us each take a turn poling the mokoros! Poling the mokoros turned out to be way harder than it looked and even though each of us gave it a try, we never had any words of wisdom or advice to pass on to the next person. 

Katie steering us right into the reeds.

The funniest part of us trying to pole happened while Podge was at the helm. I remarked that it was hard to know what exactly to do with the pole, to which Trevor responded, “Its like the first time you have sex.” The whole boat, as well as some spectators, burst out laughing. We decided to leave the rest of the poling to the guides, who told us they had learned to pole in just two days.

After we made fools of ourselves poling around, our guides took us on a game walk. We saw a lot of different animal tracks (zebra, hippo and elephant) and our first game sighting – five hippos in lagoon! 

Me in an elephant foot print.

Even though we didn’t see a lot, it was still so nice walking around the bush. Our guides were very knowledgeable about all the plants and tracks that we came across. One plant that smelled a lot like sage is burned to keep mosquitos away; the berries of another plant are mixed with water and sugar and fermented for a few days in order to produce brandy; and another plant can actually make people blind if it’s milk gets in the eyes. 

Wading through water to get to the lagoon.

I just couldn’t get over what an incredible place we were walking through. It really felt like we were in the middle of the wilderness (we were) and that there are no people for miles. I was also amazed at how well local people had adapted to this delta environment. 

The ride back to our island was even more beautiful than previous rides had been. 

Dinner tonight was much better than last night’s dinner. In fact, it kicked ass! We bried (grilled) pork over the fire, grilled some corn on the cob and sautéed potatoes. Everything tasted so fresh and had such great flavor. We even bought stuff for s’mores – pink and white marshmallows, biscuits and Top Deck Cadberry chocolate. They weren’t exactly “American,” but they were so good.

Prepping the meat.

Another neat thing about our trip so far is that we have already gotten to meet such interesting people. From the people at the Old Bridge Backpackers, to our guides (who love to say that something is, “Numba One!”), and even to the two older women camping with us, everyone has such different and interesting life stories. One of the women with whom we were camping has her PHD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and has pretty much spent her life constantly changing jobs, trying new things and traveling. It was cool to listen to her story, especially as I am starting to think about what I want to do next.