The Okavango Delta

We headed out from Kasane and the Chobe National Park (lots of elephants and hippos - around 92,000 elephants to Botswana's 1.8 million people) to Maun, where we stayed at a crocodile farm campsite called Sitatunga. There is this massive sports stadium in Maun with a grass hockey turf and massive running track that would rival many of the facilities we have at home. It was quite strange considering the housing, while better than in the northern parts of East Africa, was still remarkably basic. We left the campsite early the next morning to spend the next two nights in the Okavango Delta, a large delta in Bots covering the same land mass as Switzerland and with, of most concern to me, 70 different species of snake. Yuck. We were paired up and given a dug out canoe (commonly known as a makoro) and a poler who was to pole us through the delta to a bush camp for the next three days. The polers stayed with us in the Delta and kept our fire going, sang songs for us around the fire (and we reciprocated but we were so bad it was incredibly embarrassing) and took us out walking on the Delta first thing in the mornings and in the afternoon looking for game. The Delta was beautiful and it was really cool to float around the tiny waterways between the grass reeds just inches above the water. We had a fantastic time camping as it was very basic with a new hole dug for our toilet, mice everywhere (they even ate through our longlife milk carton) and the hippos just around the corner in the hippo pool. On one of the mornings, Grant decided not to get up and walk so I went without him on what I thought was a short walk (4 and a half hours and an odd 20km later...!) over the Delta. Despite being 20km away from the National Park, we came across an elephant, buffalo, zebra and...wait for it....a massive 2 metre long black mamba! There were five of us wandering along, with our guide (scarily, named Disaster - a name he claims to have chosen from the dictionary), when we came across the snake which was basking in the sun about two metres from us. We all froze and just stood there until Disaster said, "it's a black mamba" and we slowly started to back away at which point it lifted its head, figured out we were there and then turned and hightailed it in the other direction. Which is lucky considering: (1) Black mambas are super agressive and will chase you if they feel threatened; (2) when attacking they can rise up to two thirds of their body length (3) they can move far quicker than we can run; and (4) after you have been bitten you have around 5 minutes before you die. So, very very cool to have seen such a deadly animal but it is very scary to think that the day could quite possibly have ended very differently. Aside from that small amount of excitement, we played a ton of 500 (cards), went swimming in a freezing swimming hole, and took a sunset cruise int the hippo pool. It was an amazing weekend!