Two nights camping in the Okavango Delta in Botswana and I feel like I've taken part in it - minus the cameras and bush tucker trials!
After loading everything we needed into mokoros, we arrived at our electricty free, toilet free resort on an island in the middle of the delta, which, as well as being a unique ecosystem, is Botswana's premier tourist attraction, reputed to be teeming with wildlife. They did pretty well at evading us mind - we didn't see much other than a few warthogs, springboks and other deer-like creatures that are all starting to blend into one by now.
A mokoro is a dug out canoe carved out of a single tree and propelled along the Delta by polers. We were told they were surprisingly stable but they felt pretty precarious to me, particularly when a spider lands in between your boobs but you can't freak out or you'd tip the boat ...
For those of you EA people who think all rivers run to the sea ... Not so! The Kavango river starts in Angola before flowing into Namibia and into the vast flat landscape of Botswana where it's swallowed up by the Kalahari sands. The river eventually loses itself in a maze of emerald green lagoons, islands and channels that make up the wetlands of the Okavango Delta.
So for two days, we had to do our business in holes (the door was a shovel - if the shovel wasn't at the side of the designated tree, the toilet was occupied!), cook on a log fire and entertain ourselves with games I haven't played since I was in Brownies, including my new old favourite, wink murderer.
In another (probably vain) attempt to get this blog up to date, I'll stop there abut Botswana seeing as we've been in Namibia for almost a week now!
Catching Dik Dik* in Namibia
I seemed to catch a 24 hour stupid bug as soon as we entered Namibia.
It started by getting up to do breakfast an hour earlier than I should have and ended with me jumping into a swimming pool with my Ugandan phone in my pocket with a million ridiculous things in between.
We have a daily Dik Dik award on the truck for the person who says or does the most ridiculous thing. Until Namibia, I didn't have one single nomination let alone the award, but within 24 hours of being in the country, I'd won with my only competition being my other three nominations.
My favourite Dik Diks have mostly gone to Jaime or Abi. Examples include :
* Jaime asking what time the meteorite would hit so she could go and watch it.
* Abi asking if you needed a parachute to sky dive
* Jaime asking if hippos could climb trees
(Jaime and Abi remind me of a someone who works in SE Corporate Services... Anyone able to guess who?)
Anyway, since being in Naimibia, we have visited a cheetah park, salt plain and a Himba tribe village, seen the worlds biggest meteorite, gone on some game drives and camped in what felt like sub-zero temperatures.
I'm writing this on the way to Swakopmund where we'll be skydiving (with a parachute Abs!), sand boarding and quad biking - can't wait!
There's also free wifi so if it's decent enough, I'll try to Skype / FaceTime.
* Please note this is a small African animal, nothing untoward!
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