I've just come back from three weeks of camping in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. There was so much water this time it was breathtaking, everything was green and lush and full of life. We started off flying to Windhoek, and then drove from there to Maun. In Maun Greg and I caught a small charter plane to Nguma Island Lodge in the Delta, which was incredible. The pilot allowed me to sit in the front with him, so I could watch him flying the plane, and I had an amazing view. Every time he saw animals he would swoop around in a circular dive, tilting me at a 90 degree angle, practically flying upside down until we were flying low, right above them- we dived over a herd of wildebeest and lechwe which scattered through the water, hooves kicking up the droplets as they ran, making rainbows, and we swooped low over an unsuspecting elephant who glanced at us, unphased and continued his bath. Neil the pilot, got a bit lost, so we got about 20 minutes extra flying time as he tried to find the right co- ordinates which was great for greg and me. Nguma Island Lodge is beautiful. Its on Nguma lagoon, and the tents are suspended on stilts above the water, connected by a long bridge that goes to the main dining area. Its surrounded by trees which boast a myriad of birds which wake you up in the morning and sing you to sleep at night, joined by a chorus of frogs and crickets. My favourite sound is the skops owl, which is no bigger than the palm of my hand, who has a distinct purring call which sounds just like his name, "skops skops skops." We stayed at Nguma for three nights, packing the boats and preparing for the trip. We did not travel lightly, we took about 20 ammo boxes full of food and supplies, as well as tables, chairs, tents, mattresses, sleeping rolls, etc, so packing took a long time. Finally packed, we left on thursday morning, Greg driving the one boat and Errol driving the other. We drove all day through a maze of channels, I honestly don't know how Greg navigated his way through them, some of them are so narrow you almost can't see them. The river banks are coated in tall reeds, which smack into your face and drop millions of spiders all over you as you brush through them. In one part of the river a pod of hippos with tiny babies was wallowing in the midday sun. We had to drive past them at full speed, because they are extremely dangerous as they can overturn the boats- the big male lunged at us, his massive jaw snapping open as he leapt at the boat, but we were already past him by the time he was close enough to do harm. We stopped at the first island called twin baobabs, and began unloading the boat, we had just finished unpacking, when roger and bernie, who had been in the forest collecting wood came running into the camp, screaming that an elephant was coming. Merle, Roger's wife, immediately surmised that her husband was full of bullshit and that there was no elephant and laughed at him. But she stopped pretty soon afterwards when a massive elephant bull with red angry eyes came trumpeting out the bushes and immediately started charging at us, ears flapping, trunk up, sniffing us, and feet scraping the ground as he came towards us. I immediately dashed for the boat, that three men hadn't been able to shift earlier and single handedly pushed it into the water, while everyone else ran for the other boat. We jumped onto the boat and quickly poled it back into the channel as the bad tempered bull ran trumpeting after us, and then we were stuck. Our stuff was on the island, the elephant bull was walking back and forth in front of it, with us watching him from the lagoon. We waited for a few hours, and it started getting dangerously late, and the elephant hadn't moved, so eventually Errol had to release a bear banger (it emits a loud sound like a gun shot) and the elephant finally, with one last defiant trumpet, sauntered off into the bush, and we were able to dash back onto the island to quickly pack our camping stuff back on the boat, and move to a new island. We stayed on the other island for the night, and awoke the next morning to find ourselves surrounded by another herd of ellies rustling the Makalane palms for their fruit. We quietly packed up the campsite, watched by the inquisitive matriarch of the herd, and we had just loaded up the last of the stuff on the boat when one of the elephants charged at us, and we quickly poled back into the lagoon. That day we drove the boat for a further 5 hours or so and then took our time choosing our campsite before finally settling on Xaxue island, on a grassy patch with a view over the surrounding channels and islands. At night the purple and blue colours of the sky (caused by the shadow of the earth) reflected back into the water around us, and the nightjars and owls started their chorus, and we heard lions roaring as they hunted on the opposite island, and the human- like screams of the elephants guarding their young. The island had a large field of sage and golden wild grass in its center, which glowed at dusk when it was touched by the last fingers of sunlight, and on the side there was a forest where the elephants came everyday to eat the jackal berries and the Pel's fishing owl made its home in the tallest trees.
