Within one of the world’s largest deserts lies one of the world’s largest wetlands.
Although the idea of paddling through a desert wildlife park sounds impossible, in northern Botswana it is fast becoming the way to experience the silence and solitude of the Kalahari. Even for those bored by the idea of rattling around game parks in four-wheel-drives, travel by traditional makoro canoe is refreshingly different. And it also means seeing wildlife up close, and in total silence.
Prevented from reaching the ocean by thousands of kilometres of sand and solid rock, the 1430km-long Okavango River empties into the Kalahari Desert, literally swamping 16,000sq km of otherwise perfectly good desert. In doing so, it creates a landscape that exists nowhere else on Earth. The delta is filled each year by the heavy summer rains upstream in Angola and the only way the resulting water leaves is by evaporating or seeping into the ground. And because it takes several months for water to meander the length of the river, the water level in the delta reaches its peak during the cool dry season of June to August, which is also the best time to see animals.
Although at first glance the delta can seem like an endless expanse of reeds and grasses, there are half a dozen distinctly unique ecosystems, all of which can be explored by foot or canoe. On any given day, tourists encounter grassland savannah, salt pans, patches of forest, the shallow water holes loved by hippos, wetland grasses and empty expanses of sand and dust. And within every system are the animals best suited to it – for example, zebras and giraffes in the savannah, and crocodiles and frogs in the wetland grasses.
Because food and water for the animals are plentiful, animal numbers are stable and strong. It also helps that the difficult conditions deter the poachers devastating rhino and elephant populations in more accessible parks, such as South Africa’s Kruger.
Setting off from the small Botswana town of Maun, we travel for two hours by four-wheel-drive, where we meet KP, our guide for the trip, and load up our makoro. This is a small, locally made canoe powered by a person wielding a large stick, much like the gondolas of Venice.
This form of transport has been used in the shallow water of the delta for centuries, and is popular with tourists, who get to watch birds while the guide does the hard work of poling. On the downside, the canoes are so crudely constructed that they require straw at the bottom to soak up leaks, and offer a clear choice between sitting perfectly still or getting completely soaked.
Setting off, it’s the silence I notice first. There is no sound at all except the gentle hum of insects as we edge into a vast plain of water lilies and papyrus. From water level there is also precious little to see through the metre-high grass, except where the river opens out into enormous pools. Flocks of Egyptian geese, goshawk and bright copper and orange African jacana birds become more common as we leave civilisation further behind, and on one occasion we stop to watch an elephant tearing chunks from a small cluster of trees.
Two hours into the delta, we set up our tents beneath a stand of trees, and continue inland on foot.
It’s a rare thing in this age of lawyers and indemnity papers to be allowed to walk anywhere in a national park, but because the water operates as a barrier against larger predators, sizeable sections of the park are considered safe. More or less, anyway, as here there are hippos, which kill more people every year than any other animal in Africa. There are also elephants, which our guides steer clear of at a time of year when many have young calves in tow.
Ironically, travelling by foot does not mean getting closer to animals than one would in a vehicle. Although animals in parks have become used to the sound of trucks, they are not at all fond of the smell of people, and wildebeest, in particular, scarper at the first sniff of a tourist. Luckily, zebra and giraffes are less sensitive, and by moving quietly we are able to get in close to the herds without apparently disturbing them – at least they don’t often stop eating.
The positive side of being on foot is a much closer relationship to the land and animal life than is possible by four-wheel drive, especially as most large parks forbid tourists to leave their vehicles at any time for any reason. KP also uses the walks to teach us about the environment, pointing out spoor, animal tracks (including those of an extremely large snake) and plants, birds and insects.
The best times to see and photograph game are sunrise and sunset, and KP ensures we are up and out on the savannah for both. The plains teem with animal life at dusk, with large herds of 50 or 60 zebra ambling through the golden light, accompanied by smaller numbers of their best friend, the wildebeest.
The presence of hippos and crocodiles means we have to be in camp by sunset, but there are worse ways to spend those evenings than chatting around the campfire with a bottle of pinotage while our cook serves some excellent beef stew and salad. The guides are all in bed by 9.00pm, but given our 5.30am wake-up call, we aren’t far behind them.
On our second day we head out by makoro in an attempt to get close to some hippos, but the guides are reluctant to get as close as I’d like – moody hippos have been known to attack canoes, sending people and their expensive cameras into the water. Slow and cumbersome as they may look, hippos can hit speeds of 40km/h on land, and their fiercely territorial nature means they think nothing of charging at any intruder. Although vegetarian, a hippo with its enormous teeth can give a crippling, if not fatal, bite. Perhaps not surprising for an animal that eats 70kg of grass a day and weighs close to three tonnes.
Thankfully, most of the animals are better natured, and on every walk or makoro ride we take in the delta, we see good numbers of zebra, giraffe, impala, antelope and wildebeest.
We also see evidence of the destruction left by elephants, which have an unfortunate habit of uprooting trees to eat the roots, leaving behind swathes of land stripped of vegetation. This is fast becoming a crisis for parks such as the neighbouring Chobe, where elephant numbers have surged to levels far beyond what the landscape can sustain. Although everyone is happy the animals are plentiful and safe from poaching, elephants are more than capable of eating themselves out of house and home, and numbers must be controlled for their own good. Unfortunately, few tourists or environmental groups want to hear about elephants being shot, so the parks are thus far tending to stick to moving animals around, rather than taking firm action in the face of media attention.
After two nights in the delta we head back to Audi Camp, 12km outside Maun. Even the river camp gives a sense of the pace of life in the delta, with the river idling by and little to do but sit outside with a beer and wait for the chef to finish barbecuing some unfortunate beast.
The pace of life is as languid as sleepwalking, but there is a lot to be said for the slowest, quietest, wettest way yet of seeing the African desert.