The past few days have been filled with crazy camp dogs, long stretches of excellent Botswana's roads (can't go faster than 80 kmp due to all the roaming cattle, goats, wild painted dogs, donkeys), and today we took a day trip on the local mokoro (traditional dugout canoe) in the Moreni Park.
You cannot get much more relaxing than doing a mokoro ride.
Each mokoro holds two passengers, their gear and a poler (person who stands and 'poles' you around the networks or waterways). It was incredibly relaxing to just sit or lay back with the sun shining down on your face, sound of the pole dipping into the water. Once in a while a motor boat would pass and we would stop and wait in the reeds before proceeding.
Lots of gorgeous white, yellow and purple lilies. Did i mention how relaxing it was?
It is the dry season now but they had quite an abnormally wet dry season so luckily we were able to actually do the mokoro trip in the first place. Our poler, Joe, was a young lad who said he enjoyed the job but that it was 'too easy'. 'Monotonous' was the word he was probably looking for. That, and maybe 'boring'. But for the passengers, it is just incredibly peaceful and relaxing. I presume it earns him a fairly good income though.
The other poler for the other mokoro (we went with two other guys, friends who were motorbiking from Luanda, Angolo to Lusaka, Zambia), Joseph, was older, more knowledgeable and extremely more chatty. He seemed to enjoy his job quite a lot and he took us to his village, Borro, where he showed us "my very own solar panel!!"
There, we also met Esther, a single woman who was constructing her own house out of termite hill mud. Desperately wanting to get my hands in the muck as well, I asked to help and slap on a bit of the mud. She was very kind and let me do so. Great fun!
After lunch, Joseph took us on a "short bush walk" which was really a long drawn-out stroll in the mid-day heat.
"All the animals sleep or stay in the shadow during the middle of the day so we may not see anything today" explains Joseph.
I'm wondering why we're not sleeping or staying in the shadow as well. But onwards we trekked. If anyone was looking, it would've been a funny sight to behold: 4 tourists and their trusty guide walking in single-file into the bush in search for ?, not even a fly in sight.
But by some miracle, Joseph spotted a young male elephant in the distance. In the FAR FAR distance. It still amazes me how these guys can spot game from miles away. We aimed to get as close as possible to the elephant, walking through more bushland, passing dozens of termite hills and the occasional tree.
At about 50 metres away, we watched and observed the elephant for a while. It actually was really exciting to be spying on him as he kicked up mounds of dirt to mix with water, creating a mud-like substance to coat himself with. It was all so very natural, peaceful and yes, relaxing.
On the mokoro ride back, we passed more hippos and then about 1 km down from them, we passed a group of tourists who were in the middle of doing some water aerobics amongst all the lilies and reeds! I asked our guides if we could go for a quick dip also, so in we went, a perfect refreshing end to our perfect relaxing day.
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Distance Travelled: 0 km
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Temperature: a beautifully hot day spent in the cool water channels of the Okavango Delta.
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