Okavango Delta

It was only a 7am departure today, so we got to sleep in till 6. The mosquito nets did their stuff and we had a decent night's sleep. We had to cram everything that we were going to take to the Delta into a day pack. Easy? Well, take your clothes and toiletries, add your sleeping bag, sleeping mat, pillow, 5 litres of water, and it's pretty difficult. A truck arrived to pick us up a bit before 7, we crammed our packs, food, cooking equipment, stoves, gas bottles, chairs and tents on board, climbed on top of it all, and off we went.

It took almost two hours to get to the landing - an hour down the road, and an hour into the bush. The park rangers wanted an argument with the driver over some technicality at the park gate, but they eventually let us in, and in our short trip to the canoes we saw 5 elephants moving through.

We de-trucked into mokoros (flat bottomed canoes traditionally made out of whole trees), and we gingerly climbed aboard. It was pretty hot sitting still and exposed, but it was lovely and quiet as we were poled along by our guides. Yes, we saw a hippo, though it wasn't close enough to cause any concern. For those of you who can tell an emu from a magpie, we also saw white egret, purple heron, pied kingfisher, pygmy geese, black crake, and african jacana. For those of you who can't, we saw a lot of different birds.

Arrived at the campsite after an hour or so on the water, and set up our camp, even putting flies on the tents as thunder could be heard in the distance. Had the obligatory toilet training lecture, and discovered the multiple uses that a spade can be put to. Our first free time, a relaxing afternoon in the camp but, of course, we had to leave all stuff like books back at camp so there wasn't much to do.

At 5pm we gathered for our dusk safari, and were given the safety drill. There are 6 dangerous animals, we were told - elephants, lions, buffalo, leopard, anaconda and hippo. We weren't going through water, so we could ignore the hippo. If a buffalo charges you, we were told, scatter for the nearest bush and stay still and quiet. Fair enough. If an elephant charges you, ignore the first two charges as they are just warnings. Ok, nerves of steel required, but I think I can manage it. If you are charged by a lion, don't run. Stand still and stare it down until it turns and goes away. You're kidding! A five foot skinny, white guy, and the best defence I have against a charging lion is bluff.

Anyway, that over, we divided into two groups and headed off. Our guide was a short, quiet, reserved native bushman with the appropriate name of Killer. Knew his stuff. He could tell us which tracks were which, and even gravely told us once that the dung we had come across was from a tall, female giraffe about 5pm the day before.

You may have noticed an omission at the briefing. What to do when charged by a leopard. This was weighing heavily on my mind as we walked along. But as luck would have it, Killer had one drawback - he couldn't find any animals. Lots of tracks, plenty of dung, flocks of birds, but not an animal.

However, the highlight of the walk was coming across a huge burrow dug, we were told, by an aardvark, who can smell an ant's nest a metre under ground - a key skill at the Okavango labour exchange. Now aardvarks have a special place in the heart of anybody who went to Monash Uni in the seventies. Every first year student was given a handbook - the A to Z of Monash Uni. The first entry in the book was:
"Aardvark - a small ant eating animal. Included so that Abortion is not the first entry.
Abortion - if you need ....."
But an aardvark's hole was as good as it got, and Killer kept apologising as we trudged back to camp for tea and an early night, during which it rained almost non-stop.