Tale guide

Okavango Delta

The Okavango Delta

‘Ann of Africa’ and ‘the Bushman’ visited the delta a couple of times at the turn of the century, during which we were captivated by its kaleidoscope of land, water, birds and wildlife from the air, on land and in the swamps.

We shared our experiences in articles we wrote for magazines like Leisure Wheels and Caravan and Outdoor at the time.

The distance from Nata to Maun along the Okavango’s southern boundary is three hundred kilometers and from Maun to Shakawe up its Western boundary, is a further three hundred and seventy kilometers.

Shakawe lies on the top of the panhandle on the Caprivi border of Namibia. Its at this point that the Okavango river, that flows from the Benguela highlands of Angola for over 1,600 kilometers, pushes over eleven million cubic kilometers of water out via hundreds of streams across a staggering 15, 000 square kilometers until the water finally disappears into the sands of the Kalahari Desert.

The Okavango is the home of the largest concentration of wildlife on the continent and is both a UNESCO world heritage site as well as one of the seven natural wonders of Africa and certainly rivals the Serengeti.

The delta is very flat, with less than two meters variation in height across its 15,000 square kilometre expanse, while the water drops about 60 meters from Shakawe to Maun.

In those days, Maun was a dusty frontier town where tourists, scientists, explorers, historians and conservationists mingled in an atmosphere of opportunity and adventure.

The town provides a base from where supplies could be bought for expeditions deep into the delta, the Kalahari and the Moremi, the latter of which takes up most of the Eastern boundary between Maun and Kasane.

We bumped into a few of the warm and friendly folk in a local pub at the Sedia Hotel on one occasion and couldn’t get out until the early hours of the next morning when we stumbled our way back to camp on the banks of the Thamalakane river across the way.

We got lost in the Moremi, (naturally!)

Four of us had entered the reserve one early morning and made our way along miles of waterways encountering various game as we ventured deeper into the bush.

The thing about Moremi is that unlike its commercialised counterparts further south, its wild; I mean really wild. There are restrictions as to the number of visitor permits are issued at any given time in order to limit the number of people in the park, so the likelihood of encountering other people is also remote. There are no organised camps nor rules as such. You basically take your chances inside and outside your vehicle and you are expected to adopt a cautious and intelligent approach to your visit.

Campsites comprise open clearings in the bush. Campers are intuitively primed to remain alert for elephant or jackal, or the odd passing pack of hyena or lion that may wander into a campsite in search of a scrumptious morsel or two.

Equally there are no signboards to help you find the nearest restaurant or Coke dispensing machine of which there aren't any. Once you enter, you must make do with whatever you took with you and you have to find your own way out!

Anyway, thank heavens for the good old Garmin and the ability to backtrack along the route we had come from.

Maun, reputedly, is the largest and busiest airport on the continent with so many light aircraft flying to and from remote locations deep inside the delta as well as jaunts out for the likes of us to take in arial views of the swamps and its herds of roaming game.

It is the gateway to the Okavango, Moremi and the Makgadikgadi as well as cross border flights into Namibia and South Africa.

On one occasion we took our friends Ken and Inge to the airport for a scenic flight, and we got delayed when we discovered a café that made the best chips ever! The fact was that we had been away from fast food shops for quite a while, so the prospect of a bag o’ fresh chips was too good to pass up on. And the brief interlude stood us well as we somewhat nervously took to the skies in a single engine piper and a pilot with a mischievous sense of humour!

In Shakawe we were able to spend some days on the river, tiger fishing and bird watching.

African skimmers, white-backed heron, long-toed plover, green-backed herons, fish eagles, water dikkops, white-fronted bee-eaters, brightly coloured carmine bee-eaters that fly in from Europe in their thousands every year are present in abundance, and we found the elusively and rare, Pels fishing owl in Shakawe.

In the Caprivi Strip, just north of Shakawe, the Okavango river crosses an extensive sill of quartzite and separates into many smaller channels at Popa Falls where the SA Defence Force established one of its bases during the Angolan border war. Popa Falls is not a waterfall in the traditional sense but more a sequence of rapids of around 1000 meters wide. But it becomes quite dramatic in the rainy season when the water from the north pushes its way through the falls into the narrow panhandle and out into the marshlands of the delta.

There is an old recruitment office in Shakawe on the banks of the panhandle that belonged to the Employment Bureau of Africa (TEBA). It was here and at similar trading posts located around Southern Africa, that the South African Mining industry recruited thousands of miners from the region to work the gold and platinum mines on the Witwatersrand.

I was privileged to be invited by the Teba management of the day, to stay at the Shakawe one as well as their Kosi Bay camp on the Mozambique’s southerly border during the 1990s as part of a group of fishermen that later became the infamous ‘Team Smelly Fingers’.

These were male only fishing expeditions during which we got to make our way by boat through narrow waterways to numerous small islands mindful of the crocodiles and hippo and fascinated by the abundance of local and visitor birds that are found in the area as well as being challenged by the very strong and aggressive tiger fish that inhabit the river.

There was an occasion while Ann and I were touring, that I decided to go tiger fishing on my own.

On this occasion I hired the services of a chap and his mokoro to take me through the waterways to a rocky outcrop on the river. Here he dropped me off with tackle and lunch box with an agreement to come and collect me later that afternoon.

The rocky outcrop presented an ideal fishing spot sporting a section of rock that stuck out over the water and which was elevated about a meter or so above the river level.

It was here that I started casting into the river with a tiger spoon on the line and commenced the process of winding the line back, in anticipation of a strike.

This went on for an hour or so and I soaked in the peaceful, sun-soaked surroundings made magical by the sounds of birds all around.

I was having a really pleasant time although I hadn’t caught anything as yet, when all of a sudden and without the slightest warning, a massive crocodile came out of the water and swiped its huge tail across the rock I was standing on, so close that I was drenched with the spray of the water and I felt the wind rush of the tail past my legs.

Had I been a foot closer to the edge, I would have been swept off the rock into the water. It was time to re-evaluate my position! Close call indeed but just another demonstration of the violent danger that lies beneath the exquisite beauty of Africa.

Foot and mouth disease is an ever-present threat in northern Botswana and on the roads that lead into and out of these areas, we encountered foot and mouth control gates where we had to stop for inspection.

All of the shoes that we had on board had to be dipped in a foot dip and the vehicle had to be driven through a dip trench to disinfect the tires.

Any dairy and meat products in our possession were required to be confiscated even if sealed in their original packaging.

In the beginning of our travels, Ann of Africa, being the discerning lady that she is, packed a wide selection of shoes for every occasion. On the first time she had to unpack her collection and dip them, one by one into the dip mat, she took an executive decision that going forward, she would only pack a pair of spare takkies, just in case!

On another occasion and in the company of our friends, we were leaving Namibia at the far Eastern point of the Caprivi Strip to cross back into Botswana when we had stop at a foot and mouth checkpoint on the border.

This time around we were prepared and all that was left in the van were a couple of yogurts, so Ken and I decided that instead of handing them over, we would eat them whilst standing in the morning sunshine!

Although the Okavango caters as much for luxury private lodges and river cruise house boats with all the benefits expected of five-star treatment including personal guides, it is equally perfect for campers and caravanners as well as the more ambitious adventurers who seek the rugged, untamed African bush.

If you seek a truly African wildlife adventure, the Okavango is way up there, on the top of the list of destinations to head for. It is quite simply breathtaking on so many levels.