Delta and Chobe

Hi Everyone! We’ve arrived in Victoria Falls this afternoon, are are looking forward to spending three nights in the same place! We’ve also upgraded to a simple room, with luxuries such as lighting, a bathroom, a fan and beds! 

Last Saturday we left Windhoek and crossed the border in to Botswana, and spent that night near a small town called Ghanzi. 

On Sunday we continued on to Maun, and we arrived at our campsite early enough to enjoy the pool and bar. 

On Monday we left from our campsite at Maun in boats, and travelled up the river for about 45 minutes in motor boats. There we transferred in to mokoros (a traditional dugout canoe, paddled by a poler). We take our overnight bag, sleeping bags, and water in the mokoro with us, and sit on top of the mats that we use for sleeping. Our tents are taken in another mokoro along with additional gear and food. There are two people per mokoro, plus the poler who stands at the back and steers and pushes you through the water. It was about an hour by mokoro, to reach our remote campsite in the Okavango Delta. The mokoro ride was beautiful and in some ways peaceful, but also it felt very unstable, so it felt like you were going to tip over in to the water at any moment. Also, you are gliding though the reeds, and there are many spiders and insects in these reeds, so occasionally you will have a spider or large insect on you but you can squirm or panic, as that would surely tip the mokoro! So it was a bit stressful for both me and Cody, though other people must of enjoyed it as several other people said they had fallen asleep! Right before we arrived in to our basic bush camp, our poler did find us this cute little Long Reed Frog. He was quite enjoyable! We got in to our camp, where we set up our tents. There are no facilities here, so it is a very basic evening of camping. We spend the afternoon relaxing around camp, and in the late afternoon we headed out on a game walk. It was pretty uneventful, we had seen some elephants from our camp, and we saw some more on the game walk from a distance, but mostly the walk consisted of animal tracks and animal poop. We did see two zebra carcasses, which was interesting. They had apparently been killed by lions in the past couple of days. They were quite surreal looking. 

The next morning while packing up we discovered a baboon spider on our tent, which was unpleasant. We had breakfast at our basic bush camp, then loaded up back in the mokoros and headed back out of the delta. It was an interesting experience, but we were both a bit relieved to have the mokoros, and all the bugs behind us! We got back to our main camp, where we had left our main luggage and truck for the night. We headed out from there on to the town of Gweta. We spent the night there, in a beautiful campsite surrounded by huge baobab trees, and we had time for a much needed shower and drink at the bar. 

Wednesday morning we continued on to Chobe National Park, home to the largest elephant population in Souther Africa. We headed out on a sunset boat cruise on the Chobe River and spotted many elephants, hippos, crocodiles, buffaloes and other birdlife. We saw this elephant and hippo facing off on land, and then the hippo headed in to the water, and the elephant followed him, where they seemed to have a bit more of a showdown, but eventually the hippo disappeared under the water. 

This morning we had a bit of a sleep in, and left camp to cross the border in to Zambia. The border crossing took quite a while, but eventually we arrived in Zambia. We stopped in town to pick up water and some supplies, and then to our campsite area on the Zambezi River. 

As mentioned, we spend three nights here, so we are looking forward to exploring the falls and the activities in the area. Tonight we are heading out to a group dinner, and that will be our final dinner with the people we have been traveling with for the last 20 days or so. From here, there are 6 of us that will stay together and join up with another truck and group when we leave Victoria Falls. 

I will plan to post again on Saturday with an update from our days here in Livingstone. 

Miss everyone!