Exploring the Okavango Delta in Botswana by Mokoro

Day 31 of my 43 day trip was spent crossing the Zambian border into Botswana and preparing for our adventures in the Okavango Delta – the largest inland delta in the world.

After a great deal of driving, we arrived at our camp in Sitatunga, Maun, and put up our tents and got scrubbed up in the refreshingly cold showers. We were warned that the camp had recently had thieves who even stole from inside people’s sleeping bags!

Their method was to carefully slice open the canvas tent and side of people’s sleeping bags to pinch belongings that people had securely stuffed into the foot of their sleeping bags. Added to this, when one person woke up and chased after a thief, they were naked and covered in oil so no-one could grip onto them!

Needless to say, we all opted to leave our valuables locked up in the Acacia truck that night. Plus, Edd and I thought that we should make doubly sure that Ian and Rachel’s tents were safe by hoisting it up to a tree top using a rope slung over a branch. You should have seen the look on their faces when they came back from the shower block to see an empty space where their tent was- hilarious.

Anyway, the Okavango Delta… It’s pretty much a massive marshy expanse of land and water with thousands of inlets and lagoons separated by the odd piece of land and reeds. This obviously meant no 4X4s, so instead we hopped on some Mokoros to explore the delta by water.

What the hell is a Mokoro I hear you ask? It’s like a punt or a canoe that’s carved by hand from the trunk of a sausage tree. What the hell is a sausage tree I hear you ask? It’s like a tree but with massive sausage shaped seedpods hanging off it. They really do look like sausages!

Edd and I were still feeling mischievous from the morning so we jumped on a Mokoro together and were joined by a local guy of similar age (and mischievousness) to us. His name was Heaven, ironically, and he was our ‘poler’ or ‘punter’ or ‘captain’ as we called him and we set off.

The next couple of hours were spent meandering our way through a brain like labyrinth of  waterways, inlets and pools. We saw plenty of scary looking fish and Heaven pranked us by telling us to watch out for the jumping pihranas and deadly snakes that often jump into Mokoros – fortunately this didn’t happen but we were scared all the same. At one point though, we did see a MAMMOUTH python curled up amongst some reeds, warming up in the morning sun. It was HUGE!

Heaven made poling look easy so once Edd and I got bored of splashing Ian and Rachael, we had a go at it ourselves. It turns out that it’s not easy, and a Mokoro is not all that buoyant. Needless to say, we were crap at it and Heaven wobbling the vessel in an attempt to knock us off balance didn’t help our efforts!

At one point we passed William, the giant of a driver with a thick German accent, in a Mokoro on his own. He was obviously standing too far back on the Mokoro and we could see the problem but he was unaware! He continued on and on each push of his pole he let on a little more water untill the back end gradually got lower and lower into the water. Eventually it was up to his knees, then his waist and then his chest but he kept on poling that Mokoro until it grounded at the bottom with water at shoulder height!

Check out a guest blog post I wrote for the Acacia Africa blog too, who are the company I did my trip with in 2006. Photo credits go to Ian & Rachael Patterson because my camera got stolen a week later and I lost all my shots!