Botswana Mokoro
Created | Updated Feb 8, 2006
Described by many as the ‘Jewel of the Kalahari’ the Okavango delta lies on the North-Eastern extreme border of Botswana where the confluence of the various Kavango rivers gather from the Angolan highlands, pass through the rather eccentric hang-over of colonnial gerry-mandering that is the Namibian Caprivi strip and proceeds to flood an inland delta area of 15 000 square km of the Kalahari.
I had survived both a 12 hour journey cramped in a minibus from Windhoek to Gobabis, passing through the border at Mumono and then on through Ghanzi to Maun where I had camped the night in the well-appointed Audi Camp.
I had teamed up with a German lady called Petra at the Chameleon Lodge in Windhoek and had spent much of the journey through Botswana discussing the ‘Germans’ episode of Fawlty Towers which at the time was still banned from German TV. Despite this we seemed to have got on fine and were to rouse ourselves at 5am to get on another ubiquitous minivan before being flown from Maun airport into the heart of the Okavango near the airstrip at Seronga.
This early in the morning the sun had still not roused itself and it was thus I was treated to an early spectacle before I had even set foot in the world-famous delta. I stumbled to the showers still half asleep and navigated the maze of adobe and rush compartments to find a free shower (it was surprisingly busy) and turned on the thankfully steaming hot showers.
As I threw my head back to soak my sleepy head in the streams of hot water I looked up and saw the heavens. There was no roof and as the steam from my shower flowed upwards and outwards I saw the most fantastically clear view of the heavens that I can ever remember with the Milky Way fully defined. I think I must have stared at it for about 10 minutes as the water washed the cramp, dust and sleep from my body. It was quite a magical experience and in the words of my close friend the poet Greg Simpson it ‘made Cinemascope redundant’ as I imagined the distance between myself and these crystal-clear, yet infinitely far-out, stars.
I had survived both a 12 hour journey cramped in a minibus from Windhoek to Gobabis, passing through the border at Mumono and then on through Ghanzi to Maun where I had camped the night in the well-appointed Audi Camp.
I had teamed up with a German lady called Petra at the Chameleon Lodge in Windhoek and had spent much of the journey through Botswana discussing the ‘Germans’ episode of Fawlty Towers which at the time was still banned from German TV. Despite this we seemed to have got on fine and were to rouse ourselves at 5am to get on another ubiquitous minivan before being flown from Maun airport into the heart of the Okavango near the airstrip at Seronga.
This early in the morning the sun had still not roused itself and it was thus I was treated to an early spectacle before I had even set foot in the world-famous delta. I stumbled to the showers still half asleep and navigated the maze of adobe and rush compartments to find a free shower (it was surprisingly busy) and turned on the thankfully steaming hot showers.
As I threw my head back to soak my sleepy head in the streams of hot water I looked up and saw the heavens. There was no roof and as the steam from my shower flowed upwards and outwards I saw the most fantastically clear view of the heavens that I can ever remember with the Milky Way fully defined. I think I must have stared at it for about 10 minutes as the water washed the cramp, dust and sleep from my body. It was quite a magical experience and in the words of my close friend the poet Greg Simpson it ‘made Cinemascope redundant’ as I imagined the distance between myself and these crystal-clear, yet infinitely far-out, stars.
