Spring Break: Okavango Delta

Happy Valentine's Day from Gaborone! A few minutes before 6 am local time, my train rolled into Gaborone and before 7 am I was on my bed catching up on emails and the news. Because of the extensive nature of my spring break sojourn, the next few blogs will be chronologically break up and tell the story of the last week and a half. Thus, this first blog will be about the CIEE group trip to the Okavango Delta, to which my last blog post alluded.

Here goes.

At 2:30 pm on February 6th, the CIEE students boarded an AirBotswana flight to the safari mecca of Botswana: Maun. This small town (pop. 30,000) is the starting point for foreign tourists heading for the Okavango Delta and the Moremi Game Reserve, our destination, which occupies the northeastern section of the delta.

Our four-day, three-night trek into the bush consisted mainly of early morning, i.e. waking up on the wrong side of 6 am, and late afternoon game drives. Despite the near arid conditions we experienced all week long, it is still the rainy season. For a reason which escapes me, this translates into sparse sightings of the animals. But considering many of us had never seen many of these creatures in their native environs, we were overwhelmed, to say the least, by our African ungulate encounters.

Crossed off my checklist were: elephant, zebra, giraffe, baboon, monkey, impala, crocodile, hippo, wildebeest (to the left) and even leopard.

While we apparently couldn't see them, there were lions nestled amongst the shoulder-high grasses.

As Joe, our indispensable guide, said, "You people from the towns see with your eyes, but we from the bush see with our ears." An irrefutable statement if I ever heard one.

Another highlight from our trip was the simultaneously touristy and traditional ride on a makoro. While normally made from hollowed out trees, ours were of the modern variety: fibreglass. Essentially a flat bottomed, African gondola propelled by a poler, the makoro acted as the major form of transportation in the delta and one can see why after an hour long ride. The towering swamp ferns create a verdant tunnel, with only the hollow croaks of frogs disrupting the silence.

On Monday, we did a short morning drive and then headed back to Maun, where our group split up. My group stayed in Maun for the night and explored the very cultural town. Stands upon stands selling clothes, candies, bananas, mangos, cell phone airtime, and everything in between. Packed in alleys, crowding the bus rank, the stands were the closest thing to an authentic bazaar I've experienced thus far in Botswana.

Next Post: From Maun to Kasane.