Okavango: day 2

We woke up early the second morning to take a stunning makoro ride to another island

Chris was to be our guide again for a walking safari

I will say it was a beautiful walk

As a safari though, it kind of sucked.

It became more of a game of avoid the tourist, rather then find the animals.

The elephant skeleton was kind of cool

It was impressively big.

This is a femur. Getting it vertical was not an easy task by yourself.

Bee eaters

Back at our camp

Irene here is making one of the baskets that I bought.

They make them out of this palm

Our tour guide spent this part of the trip in camp. While we jaunted around to varying degrees of success, he had some precious time to himself. Imagine, being with a bunch of strangers 24/7 for 3 weeks. By the time you get to know them, they leave and you start it all over again. huh

Even in the delta, technology rules (or girlfriends, depending on your point of view)A small group of us went off to take a swim. This is not the spot that we swam (it was really beautiful of course), but it's on the way there

A nicely dorky picture of me in my safari getup

Utricularia! These are such cool plants! Carnivorous. The little beads you can see are capsules for capturing prey.

They live under water, but their flowers float, so they can be pollinated. Can you see the little flotation devices?

Another one of the amazing things about the Okavango is the fact that all that water dumps into a desert, and yet it is not yet another salty lake. The reason is complicated, but part of the puzzle is this - a lot of the salt in the water is pulled out and deposited on the shore by plants.

This was somewhat comical for me, they fed everyone cattail rhizomes as a sort of tourist trial.(though the polers loved them and kept munching long after the tourist took their brave little nibble) I was reminded of feeding people my plant (mine tastes better too ;)

This is our main crew of polers.

They even let us try to pole the boats

It definitely is not as easy as it looks.

Like how Chris is laughing at me?

Another lovely sunset over lily pads

It was a truly beautiful place I wish I could have stayed there longerWe had a hippo opposite our campground. He didn't love all the commotion of us coming and going. Makes this scene just a little less serene once you know that, no?My final view of the Okavango the next morning. What a lovely place

The Okavango Delta: day 1

We spent 2 days camping in the Okavango Delta, a dream come true for the wetland ecologist in me.
We drove for about an hour from the town of Maun, to our launching spot on the edge of the delta. Here, we met our guides.
Gudrun and Sebastian didn't have any hats, so we improvised for themThis is Patricia, my makoro poler

The traditional, and most efficient way to move through the delta is in the dugout canoe called a makoro. Here's the view of the view from mine as we leave the launch.

The makoros are long narrow boats that are poled through the marshes. I must say I wish I had one of these during my collection trips, for sure.

It was interesting landscape. Beautiful. Serene. Very green on the water, but inland ever so slightly was obviously tail end of the dry season.

In addition, this was apparently an extremely high water year, and many trees were a little miserable due to the excessive flooding.

One of the reasons that the delta is such a fascinating place is due to the timing of the water. The water that floods the delta comes from the highlands of Angola. It takes close to 6 months for that water to reach the floodplain. By the time it does, the rainy season in the Okavango is over. Thus, this so called 'jewel of the Kalahari' has water all year round, from the highlands in the dry season, from the skies in the wet.

Kaja and Carrie were a little nervous in this makoro and they eventually switched boats to avoid wet camera equipment

It was amazing how the makoros could push right through the reed beds.

Jan got his own boat, with his own crazy poler

The polers were very photogenic as they made their way through the delta

Determined termites

We camped between those trees

This cutie patoutie played the role of our local guide. He could tell amazing things from a pile of dried out animal poop.

Chris took us for a little walk around our little island.

It smelled amazing. Many of those plants that you see are a type of sage.

The sunset was spectacular, a red ball of flame over water lilies, hippos, and mokoros. too bad my skills as a photographer were not enough to capture it. These are my attempts though.