Ya, but it's a dry heat...

Wake up call? You guessed it… RFE!! (Really freaking early.) We are being taken out on a large open air truck with all our tents and gear for our night in the delta. We have to take our tents, a day pack, coolers with the food, utensils, the whole nine yards. I seemed a bit frantic and frenzied getting ready this morning. I mean really… is the delta going to go somewhere without us?

It was a warm evening and the morning is nice but it is promising to be Africa hot today. Everything is stacked and ready to go by the road. We dropped some clothes at the reception for laundry. It will be ready to be picked up when we get back. The truck arrives and the loading begins. The truck has a long middle bench seat so everyone sits facing out. All the gear piles under the seats, all the people pile on and we’re off. It is an hour and a half drive to the poling station. Some of the areas we drive have large numbers of trees that look like they’ve either been hit by lightening or there’s been a large windstorm. We found out later that they’ve actually been knocked down by elephants. We heard also that there is a real concern about the amount of deforestation that they are causing.

We arrived at the poling depot and it seemed like swarms of people and activity descended on the truck. I grabbed my pack and tried to stand out of the way. The makoros are flat bottom canoes that are about 12 to 16 feet long. They are traditionally made from the sausage tree (?) but some of them are made now from fibreglass. The fibreglass ones don’t leak as much. They are used on the shallow channels in the delta by the Tswana tribe to get around. Everyone was paired with a poler and the makoros were loaded up. We put our sleep pads down in the makoro and leaned against our day packs as we reclined in the low riding canoes. They are propelled by a poler who stands in the rear and pushes the boat forward with a long pole (also 12 to 16 feet long).

Our poler is Lee. He tells us that he is the fastest poler. They have races every year in the village and he is last year’s champion. We moved at a leisurely pace through the reeds for about an hour and a half to reach our campsite. There are narrow channels through the reeds from constant travel by the makoros. The water seems to be only about 4 or 5 feet deep in most places. It is so relaxing to be floating along, the peaceful rocking of the boat and gentle swishing sounds of the water and the quiet conversation amongst the polers as they guide the boats through the water. I started to drift off to sleep more than once. Plenty of bugs found their way into the boat and, since I was in the front, I got to deal with the myriad of cobwebs. Lee tells us that he is the oldest of his family and that he has 6 sisters and 3 brothers. That is one big family to support!

It’s starting to get really hot now as we head into the afternoon. We pole past a larger and deeper pool that is the home to several hippos. There are also smaller pools dotted with beautiful water lilies in full bloom. Lee picked one and gave it to us. We arrived at our campsite around 11:30 and set up the tents. It’s way too hot during the middle of the day to do much of anything really so we have free time until 3:30. We’ve been travelling at such a frenzied pace, always on the go that we hardly know what to do with ourselves! It is also now so hot that we don’t want to do anything. I can’t find anywhere comfortable to sit and there is very little shade to be found. There is a swimming hole close by that we walked over to but it was way too hot for me to get into the tent to even try to drag on my bathing suit. I walked to the swimming hole and just stood in the water up to my knees to cool off. The thermometer on the backpack says that the tent is 50C. We decided to take our packs out of the tent and put them in the shade so that everything would not melt! The reading in the shade is a mere 35C.

To distract themselves, several people had pulled out the sleeping pads and started playing cards. The polers taught them a card game that I just couldn’t quite get but seemed like it was entertaining.

At 3:30 we had to pour ourselves into long pants, socks, and shoes and climb into the makoros to head out onto a game walk. It was a quick 10 minutes or so away from camp. Once we reached our starting point, they split us into smaller groups and we headed off into the bush. Lee is our guide for the walk as well. We have Jeneen, Claire, Kerrie, Paul and Melissa in our group. We spotted hyena tracks, elephant tracks, a fish eagle (which looks remarkably like an American Bald Eagle), and several herons. If you ask me, we aren’t seeing many animals because its still too hot to be out and about. Much of the bush seems to have been burned down to a stubble. Lee told us that people burn back the brush when it gets too high so that they can see predators coming. It grows again in the rainy season. I guess that is why there is this constant low lying haze that we’ve noticed since entering Botswana.

After an hour of walking we came across a herd of Zebra. We managed to circle around them and get very close – only 10 to 15 metres. They were watching us, we were watching them watching us watching them… etc, etc… There were some wildebeest hanging on the fringe of the herd as well but they were a bit more skittish and we couldn’t get very close to them.

The termite mounds were up to 12 feet high and you could climb up on them to get a look around. Lee said that they took about eight years to get as tall as a man. We walked some more and saw a gigantic hippo skull. It was huge! I thought about it but it wouldn’t fit into my back pack unfortunately. As we walked towards the water a Reedbuck came charging out towards us trying to make a quick get away. We spotted some more zebras as we circled back around to the waiting makoros. The sun is starting to set as the other groups joined us back from their walk. The group that Darryl and Kat were reported being chased by a Cape Buffalo. That would have been scary! The temperature is finally starting to cool off to a comfortable sort of warm.

We’re the first into the makoros and Lee takes us to the hippo pond to watch the sun set. I was starting to get a bit nervous since I know that the hippo is the biggest killer of humans in Africa (yes, ahead of lions). I was also a bit nervous because the other makoros seemed to be taking a really long time to join us. We sat about ten minutes watching the hippos come up, blow water out of their nostrils like some surfacing whale blowhole and then disappear back under the water. The others finally arrived – I found out later that they had spotted some elephants just on the banks and had poled over to take a look. We sat quietly against the reeds watching the sun set like a giant dark orange ball as the hippos surfaced and sank on the other bank. As the sun got lower and lower, the hippos started to get closer and closer. There were four or so including a mama and baby. Of course, the gamble with all the surfacing and sinking is that you can’t see them and don’t know exactly where they are when they’re under the water. The sun dipped below the haze and it started to get dark. The hippos were looming closer and closer. One of the guides said “game over” which I took to mean that we’d been playing a game of African chicken with the hippos to see who’d blink first. I was definitely ready to go! I asked Lee if he could pole faster than a hippo could swim and he said no. Good enough reason for me to think it was time to go!

We were the last to leave and just as we were making our way into the shallower water into the reeds a very big hippo surfaced and opened its mouth showing us his teeth. OK… now I’m REALLY ready to go!!! We waited for one more surfacing to try and get that perfect shot but it was really time to go.

We escaped unharmed with a good story to tell. We headed back to camp for a traditional meal of maize (think polenta) and chukal-luka sauce. Yes, that’s really what it’s called. I hadn’t realized after 3 hours of searching for wild critters that I was famished! The sauce seems to be tomato based with lots of veggies in it. Ours had lots of yellow and green string beans. It must be the spice that makes it different from say and Italian tomato sauce.

That night we roasted marshmallows over the fire… well, we roasted the ones that didn’t melt into one great big sugary blob from the heat. The night was beautiful and clear, not too hot, not too cold, and we were cozy sitting around the campfire laughing and joking.
Did I mention that there are no facilities here? We are in the middle of the bush so the toilet is a hole that has been dug in the ground a little ways away from the tents. After night falls, you have to take your tent buddy to the toilet with you to watch for wild animals while you do your business. We didn’t see any that night but there was definitely no end of activity. The delta seemed noisier at night than during the day but I was tired and nothing was going to keep me awake!