Days 21 - 23

Day 21

We woke up rather later than usual the morning after the party, still revelling in the memory of the excellent food and drink. We headed into Maun to look for a garage where we could get our car serviced, as on top of our fan belt trouble we also have holes in our radiator and problems with our four-wheel drive. Maun is a very agreeable place - it is known as the safari capital of Botswana because roughly 90% of its income comes from tourists who flock there to visit the Okavango Delta. I really liked it because unlike lots of other safari towns we’ve visited, like Arusha and Livingstone, the revenue from tourism seems to have filtered through to the bottom and everyone seems to have benefited; moreover, the layout of the town is very orderly, the streets are clean and the people are very friendly and helpful. We found a respectable garage called ‘Riley’s’ where we could take our car on Monday and then we headed back to our campsite for a meal of Boerwurs stew and a game of poker.

Day 22

A trip into the Okavango Delta was what had spurred us on to drive through Botswana, so on Sunday we hired two Mokoros and two guides to take us into the Delta. A mokoro is a small, wooden dug-out canoe that is propelled forward in the water by a long stick, rather like a punting pole. We met our guides at 8 on the edge of the Delta and then we headed into the heart of it - it is an incredible experience to be travelling through such an immense area of untarnished wilderness in such a small craft. The Okavango Delta is made up of over 18,000 km2 of marshes, sandy islands covered in Mopane woodland and the odd palm tree and wide grass plains that run into seemingly never-ending reed-beds, all of this connected by thousands of small waterways cloaked thickly with water lilies, that all link up to the Okavango River. We drifted around for a couple of hours in our canoe listening to the calling of the water birds, and the odd explosion of water when a hippo bursts to the surface nearby. After this, we disembarked onto one of the sandy islands and went for a game walk. We didn’t see many animals, only zebras and some wildebeest, but our guide was very knowledgeable about the trees and plants, telling us about all their different medicinal uses and their growing patterns. On our way back out of the delta a huge storm broke and we were forced to shelter in a reed bed, watching the mokoros fill up with water and hoping the rain would stop promptly. We got back to our campsite drenched to the skin and very hungry - it had been an incredible experience and one that I will never forget.

Day 23

We took our car in for its service promptly on Monday, hoping that the service wouldn’t take too long as it is a 12 km journey back to our camp from town and walking would not be fun. Together with the garage owner we traipsed round Maun buying spare parts and equipment for the service - $100 later we possessed two new oil filters, 4 new fan belts, a new rim for one of our tyres that had had a slow puncture and an ingenious tool that would allow us to adjust the alternator so that we could more easily change the fan belts ourselves. We had to leave our car with him, so after buying some supper, we managed to hitchhike back to the camp. In the evening, the Neil gave us a lift to another campsite nearby where there was an African Jazz Concert on - wonderful music that mixed an African Beat with jazz harmonies. We spent the night dancing with the locals, many of whom we already knew from the tourism party a few nights before.

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