On the Game

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We flew into the Okavango Delta in a five seater plane with Bruce, a pilot who grew up in Devon, spent years as a mining surveyor, then somehow got into flying planes in Botswana. "Right, where are we going then?" asked Bruce as we got on board. "God, these controls look ancient. Probably date from World War Two. Still, much more fun than flying a commercial airliner - much more to do." More fun from a pilot's point of view, perhaps - from a passenger's point of view I wasn't so sure. Bruce offered me the controls mid-flight, keeping up the making-it-up-as-I-go-along feel.

The flight was spectacular, looking down as the semi-desert gave way to the lush green wetlands of the Delta; so too another flight a few days later (coincidentally also with Bruce) to Kasane, gateway to the Chobe Game Reserve.

Our hop to the Delta concluded with us touching down on a grass airstrip, and skidding to a halt by a man with a motorboat. We were then passed over to the man in question, who sped down narrow, reed lined channels, and finally across a wide open lagoon, to the Xugana Island Lodge, where at the end of a jetty a lady was waiting for us with hot towels and a welcome drink. It was all very James Bond.

Xugana offered the most amazing view from bed I've ever known. We woke up to watch the red orb of the sun rising slowly across the far side of the wide open lagoon, while birdlife of all types circled and divebombed, and the palms flapped in the breeze. The Delta is blissfully peaceful, no more so than when sitting in a mokoro (a dug out canoe - or at least they used to be, they're now mostly made from fibreglass) and watching the sun set.

From there we travelled on to the Moremi Game Reserve, and finally the Chobe National Park, where it was largely back to bush driving. We had more sightings of lions and elephants; this morning on our last drive we saw a herd of buffalo; we have seen antelope of all types (and eaten plenty of them); and we've narrowly missed seeing various leopards (but that's a long story...). We think we've done pretty well given that we showed up in the wet season, when there are few tourists around (lots of places we went to were empty after we left, and preparing to hold their Christmas parties), and the wildlife viewing is generally not supposed to be as good.

One of the strangest wildlife spots, however, involved a much smaller creature. At Moremi, we were sitting in the restaurant one evening when we suddenly became aware of being surrounded by a huge plague of termites, merrily shedding pairs of wings left, right and centre. That afternoon had seen a spectacular thunderstorm, the first really big one of the rainy season, which was still ongoing. It was explained to us that the rain prompts the soldier termites to push the worker termites out of the (ubiquitous) termite mounds. For one night only they buzz around, shed their wings, and the males frantically look for a mate - you see lots of termite couples joined at the hip (or whatever the termite equivalent is). The males that are successful get to go off and build a new mound in which the female is the queen; the rest become food, and there were plenty of happy baboons and vervet monkeys around the following morning, along with ever receding piles of termite wings. A bizarre process.

This morning we crossed the border to Zimbabwe, and we're now in Victoria Falls, about which I'm sure there will be plenty more stories, but they can wait for another day...

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Photos

Maun from the Air
In a tiny aircraft

Flying over the Okavango Delta
The land suddenly turns green

Aboard a mokoro
Punting in the tropics

Sunset in the Okavango Delta
As beautiful as any you'll see

Slumbering Lions
Getting in some kip before the next kill

Buffalo: stand well back
Even if it has got a flower behind its ear