Another for the Comeback List

---

6 Mar to 13 Mar

Another for the Comeback List

The original deal with this trip was that we travel until Patricia said stop. Then we would go back to Australia, make a final decision about where we will live for a while and build a house - perhaps. We have been travelling slowly, or trying to, and we have been covering most of the things that we agree we want to see and experience, but not all. So, the 'Comeback List' is developing. There are a few items on it already - walking the Milford Sound and a couple of other Kiwi tracks, walking Cradle Mountain in Tas, Burma (when Ang Saung Suu Kyi says it is OK to do so), Sri Lanka (when the Tamil thing is well over), Pakistan, Afghanistan (when the current blue is over), Iran (when they let us in), Israel (when they come to some kind of sensible arrangement with the people they have turfed out) - and that is just a selection..

We have another for the Comeback List - kayaking through the Okavango Delta for a few weeks. I don't think that anyone has such a trip in place but it seems that it would be something special to do if there was such a possibility.

The bit of the Delta that we visited was in Botswana at a place called UmVuVu Camp.The damp around here at the moment almost defeated us. It had been wet for the last few days and there was plenty of cloud about but the decision was taken to try and that was pleasing for most. We were trucked to a point near one of the channels on the edge of the delta. The road was pretty good but it was about 120 kms I think and low lying for most of its length. Good rain would make it very difficult. At one point there is a car ferry to take us over the Okavango River. Interesting ferry arrangement. On one side all nice and concrete, on the other they just poke it into the sand and you take your chances. We were able to drive until the water covered the road and then we stopped, as seemed appropriate. People arrived from the camp we were headed for and loaded us onto 'mokoros'. These are dugout canoes that can take 2 of us with the person in charge poling in the back. Actually they are made out of fibreglass these days.

We were ferried by locals across to an island to the Camp. A very pleasant place to while away a few days. They had set up the inevitable bar, kitchen and some interesting very large and open air showers and toilets with privacy provided by cane sheeting. There were also canvas tents - better than we had become used to - in clearings in the bush and these were complete with comfortable beds no less, and with someone coming in to clean the tent next morning (much to everyone's surprise and embarrassment when clothes left lying in a heap are moved to a nice folded pile). Very plush.

There is wildlife in the Delta, lots of it. We were given very firm and serious instructions about what to do if we encountered a hippo or an elephant on one of the paths around the camp at night. We could certainly hear them about at night and we could see the evidence, including recent evidence of elephants, along the waterways and among the trees, but we never clapped eyes on one. Wrong time of the year you see. For a start the grass is at its highest now. Territorians know and love gamba. Their passion is shared by the mob here. And gamba has mates over here. Lots of them that grow all over the place and haven't yet been eaten. Hence it is very easy for an animal to hide and they have no particular need to go to waterholes so we don't get to see them. We did have a good look around. Mokoro poled by the locals took us up the channels for an hour or so and deposited us on a large island where we trekked for 4 or 5 hours ostensibly looking for animals, but really just having a look around the bush and getting a bit of exercise - after having had the tension level developed by the guide who gave us firm instructions about what to do when an animal was confronted.

But I wouldn't come back just to see more animals. I would come back to experience again and in larger measure a really wild and beautiful place. The bit of the Delta we experienced was small. It is a very large area and, with the myriad of channels that flow through it would offer a great experience in well set up kayaks travelling through.

We will only really see a little of Botswana. It is probably a bit of a pity. It is an interesting country for Africa with a reputation of having been governed well since it claimed its independence. That makes it, more or less, one of a kind. It impresses as a well organised country that is quietly prosperous and even reasonably fair. One of our guides told us, for instance, that they used to be able to get meat off the Delta by running their cows and hunting. They can't do that now with the national park rules in place but they can now get a lot more off the tourist industry. He was very much of the view that it was a lot more valuable to get the cash that the tourists provide rather than the bit of meat. He was from a village that had been relocated off an island. When they were moved they were given a clinic, school and road works. No houses apparently. You get to build them yourself around here.

The houses in Botswana vary but are generally more substantial than the mud and stick variety that we are very used to. A lot of concrete block and mud bricks. Everyone has a garden of some nature and the area around the houses is swept and raked every day - you don't see a lot of litter about and waste seems to be managed reasonably well.

N'kwazi Camp is in Namibia and smack up against the Angolan border. We didn't cross but we did get to experience some Angolan water. It all flowed down overnight and cut us off from the truck - which had been taken on to high ground the night before. N'Kwazi will stand out in memories for the quality of the feed we had there. It had been a long drive from UmVuVu and we were relatively late so there was an arrangement made for us to eat in the restaurant rather than 'off the truck'. A three course buffet style meal with the main course consisting of three different kinds of roast, cauliflower with white sauce, roast potatoes etc etc. And I didn't even realise that I was missing them.

Namib apparently means something like 'flat, dry plain'. Namibia has mountains but flat, dry land is probably an accurate overall description. We are here during the end of the Wet season so there is plenty of vegetation but, in the areas that we have been travelling through population density is relatively low compared to the places we have been lately, farms seem to be very large and there is a decent distance between towns. Towns look reasonably prosperous and we could easily be travelling through Queensland or Central Australia. Roads, so far, have been good and there are plenty of well stocked shops and supermarkets. An easy place to travel through.

The visit to the San Bushmen will stand out in our memories. You hear about discrimination against the Bushmen in their own country. They seem to have been treated with some derision as ignorant hicks. The film 'The Gods Must Be Crazy' probably helped the view the world had of them as have a number of people who have talked and made programs that show the skills and culture of the Bushmen. They were pretty much the original inhabitants of the whole of this part of the world and have been overtaken by invaders from all sides over time.

A group of Bushmen have set up a 'Living Museum' about 90km out of Grootfontein. We made camp in the designated part of the current village which is spread over a very large area. The first to make contact, as is generally the case, were the small boys. The girls followed them. There was a lot of interest in what we had and what we were doing but they had clearly seen most of it before. A soccer game developed between the boys and those of our group who could run about. It was pretty even and played with considerable vigour, although the rules were negotiable.

Cameras were a great fascination. The kids knew how they worked and loved posing for photos. I was in great demand to take videos of kids in karate poses and doing all sorts of moves and kicks. There would then be a crowd gather to see how good they looked. They had an excellent time taking photos themselves and wearing an assortment of sunglasses, hats and whatever else they could get hold of. Differently from others we have encountered though, they would play for a while and then politely return the item to the owner without being asked.

The camp was memorable if for no other reason than the clothes-eating cows. I suspect that we were sleeping under their favourite tree. They came in the night and collected any clothes that were drying on tents or lines and had a bit of a chew. My towel went but Janet was the one who suffered the most. She had a lot of clothes strung about to dry. Most turned up around the flat the next morning but they had been pretty well chewed over. Holes all through them and very messy.

We had organised a half day walk in the bush with the community. They have constructed what is basically what a camp used to look like, a large group of people get dressed in the traditional manner and we were taken by a guide who spoke excellent English to this place. She introduced us around - very excited to have the first Russian ever to have visited the place - and introduced us to the medicine man. It was his job to really give us the story and he was brilliant. He had a fund of knowledge that he was more than happy to impart and he did so with humour. He was a great mimic, with a very expressive face and, at times, the guide, who was also his interpreter, didn't really have to say much at all.

The Bushmen have been banned from hunting for the last 10 years. They have probably been given a reason but didn't seem to think much of it. We were shown how they would hunt if they could, how to find water, the uses of many of the plants - including the way that you treat the bite of the black mamba. They were prepared to answer any question we asked about how they lived, how they used to live and the sorts of things that impact on their lives now.

The idea of the Living Museum would not be to everyone's liking and I wonder how long it will survive. At this stage though it is clear that the people here are able to make pretty good money using the knowledge they have of their own culture and putting it on show for the tourists. The medicine man's son is being taught how to follow in his father's footsteps, but his first priority is to go to school and get a good education. There was, of course, a gift shop. But this was a little different. Every item had a tag with the maker's name and the price. Two excellent English speakers presided over the till and the record book. Every item bought was listed with the price paid. Meticulous attention was paid to the records and the two people carrying out the transactions were watched keenly by a group from the village. You were able to purchase an item and shake the hand of the maker. They sold a lot more, for a lot more, than might have been purchased in a different sort of store.

We have missed the opportunity to talk to people lately. Since Malawi or even Kenya we have been camping in places that are really nicely set up for tourists but that don't allow much contact with locals other than those working in these establishments. We have guides at various times but I am missing the walks through the markets and the direct interaction that we were used to further north. Price of progress I suppose.

From the Bushmen we moved to the Etosha National Park. This Park was a lot larger once but it is still over 80,000 hectares. There are two campsites and very flash they are. It is a well set up place designed to make your wildlife watching as easy and even as luxurious as possible. Not so much luxury for us but I guess we could have had it if we had wanted to pay. Both of the camps had floodlit waterholes which would have worked really well if this had been about the only water about. But they weren't so we only really got to see a few jackals - which could also see roaming around the camp.

We did game drives in the truck out of both camps in Etosha and, even with the abundant grass and water, we were able to see some of the very large mobs of impala, springbok, oryx, zebra, wildebeest, eland that are about. We saw a few elephants, including one that looked to be pretty much on its last legs. One lioness that we saw staggered across in front of the truck on very wonky legs, staggered about 20 metres into the grass and collapsed with legs everywhere. Very sad but it didn't look like she was going to last a lot longer. She did seem to be in reasonable condition though and it may have been something that she would survive. Didn't look like it though.

You could hear the lions calling at night. Apparently the sound carries a long way and we were told they could be 5 kilometres away - although you would have thought they were a lot closer. Next morning, driving out we spotted a large male walking purposefully towards the water hole and a couple of his ladies lounging about in the trees. Janet has been after a male lion and finally got him.

And that was it for Etosha. On now through the Namibia, over to the coast and then down to the Orange River. We have only about 10 days to go now on this tour. I will write more later on about the overall tour but it could still all go bad so I will wait for it to end first.

---

Photos

Papyrus in the Okavango Delta
Apparently the elephants' favourite food. We tried it and it's not bad

Grashoek resident
This photo was taken by one of the children

Mother and child
a very new zebra

Lions on watch
Etosha National Park

Comments

[Robert J]

Hey, great photos! Nice to see some blogs from Africa!