The Delta

I have wanted to see the Okavango Delta for over 20 years.  This wish began the last time I visited Africa, only at that time, I was in Central Africa, where I saw silver back mountain gorillas, which inhabit the mountains of the Congo.  (Think Diane Fossey).  I met some Australians on that trip, who described their experience seeing elephants in the Delta.  It was magical and was literally something that I have dream about. Seeing the Delta has been on my bucket list ever since.  

Adam

The Delta is an amazing place. According to Wikipedia every year, 11 cubic kilometres (11,000,000,000,000 liters!) of water flow into the delta. It's quite difficult to get your head around what that means. It's a heck of a lot of water, and while it does spread over something like a 15,000 square kilometer area, all of that water literally disappears - is used by plants, evaporates, and makes its way into a huge aquifer. It's gone long before the continent reaches the ocean.  This is why we could fly for less than two hours and go from desert to water land.

Beware the monkeys!

After landing on our second remote airstrip (although this was our first that had cattle as a possible navigation aid), we were swept away to the lodge by Adam, who was to be our guide for the next 2 days.  The world lights up when Adam smiles.  He is particularly passionate about birding and never went anywhere without his bird book.  We were bird novices and he was quite patient with us as he showed us the beautiful birds who made the delta their home.

Our home was to be the Nxamaseri Island Lodge.  We practiced for a very long time trying to say Nxamaseri - it is essentially click + "n" + amaseri.  Timing is important in the pronunciation.  I don't think that I ever actually got it right.  

Each cabin had it's own deck, along with a lovely
tree-lined view of the delta.  It was magic.

We didn't know it before we arrived, but we timed our stay perfectly.  The lodge was just about to do some remodeling, so they were not taking any long term visitors, which meant that we were the only ones there.   We each had our own cabin, which had an open half wall facing the delta.  From our beds we would hear the hippos chuffing around as the sun set and the monkeys getting breakfast as the sun rose.  You had to be careful about the monkeys, as they considered the rooms their own.  Anything not tied down or put away was sure to be a target for their (monkey) business.  

After settling in, the proprietor, Tian (another chap from South Africa) suggested that we go on a sundowner cruise.  We took full advantage of that offer and scrambled into the skiff, arms full of gin, and snacks. Catherine was our mixologist.  We treated Adam to olives (beware the pits), peanuts, and dried fruit.  He was quite willing to try all of these new flavors as he educated us on the various birds and plants of the delta.

Papyrus

This wonderful water world supports a broad range of life: fish (sport fishers flock here - we took a pass on that option) reeds, papyrus, hippos, crocodiles and birds.  The water has a high amount of minerals in it, which means that not much in the way of nutrients go to the surrounding land.  That said, Delta water served as our drinking  water  (after filtering and boiling). It was sweet and tasty.  And, those that live in it seem to thrive.

The bird life was beautiful, and with Adam's help we learned to identify many and better appreciate them all.  There were Jakanas, Darters, Bee Eaters, Fish Eagle, Kingfishers, and Egrets.  There is also a very rare species of owl that we didn't see.  Here are a few that I was able to capture:

Bee Eater

Fish Eagle

  

Fish Eagle on the hunt

Egret

Kingfisher

As we meandered through the Delta in the late afternoon light, G&T's in hand, the day came to an end and the light just kept getting better and better, going from this:

to this:

and finally this:

It took our breath away.  As Tian said, you really cannot capture the magic of an African sunset with a picture.  You'll have to take my word for it that it was FAR better than it looks!

And so, that was the end of our 4th full day in Africa.  We had started the day in the middle of the Kalahari desert and ended listening to the hippos wake up for their nightly foraging.  (Go here and listen hippo sound #2 for an example!)

We drifted off to this lovely sound, in this really peaceful place.  The next day we were going inland to see 20,0000 year old Bushman paintings.  And, when we woke up, we knew that the day was going to be great.    I will tell you all about it later, but here is how we started:

From Dust to Rust

On the morning of May 22nd, we got up early to head north.  As you can see from the map, we left the northern part of the Kalahari Desert, stopping in Maun for fuel, and then on to Nxamaseri Lodge in the heart of the Okavango Delta .  Traveling from desert to delta, our world was about to change, literally under our feet.

Catherine made it a habit to do her flight planning between sundowners and dinner.  On the night of the 21st, she was muttering to herself (and maybe to us) that she left one of her maps in the plane.  She seemed almost apologetic about it.  At the time that seemed strange to me.  We knew where we were going.  Our visual reckoning over the Central Kalahari was pretty darn good (and that was with almost no landmarks) and I knew that as we flew north there would be many more recognizable way points.  What was there to be guilty about?

Dixie looks like a wee little plane
amongst all of the Caravans

Catherine and Aman, (our Map Angel) filing flight plans.  

As it turned out, there was maybe just a small thing or two to be concerned.  The pilot's job is good flight prep to ensure safe flights.  Before I arrived, the folks at Sky Africa drilled Catherine with flight plans and details and gave her all of the maps for the journey...except for one:  The trip from Maun to Nxamaeri.  Catherine's job was to be sure that she had all of the information in hand and organized.  In the massive information download, this one (and only this one) was missed.  And, she only discovered the missing item when we returned to the plane that morning, which was a tad too late to do anything about it.  The good news was that we had a short flight to Maun, which is a large regional airport, and we would surely find a map there.

So, after saying goodbye to our new friends in Deception Valley, we headed back to Dixie.  By this time we were getting pretty good at packing, pre-flight checks and giving Catherine some quiet time before take-off.  Similar to many other things in life (bike racing and boating included) when piloting a small plane, there is always a necessary pre-departure bio-break.  Maybe too much information, but, I found the parallels interesting.  It must be some throw-back to how we managed effective hunting in days gone by....or not.

A pretty typical airport Flight Ops Office

Anyway, with wheels off the ground by 8:00(ish), we headed for north for the short flight to Maun.  On our approach, it became clear that Maun is a big transit point for lots of air traffic.  The airwaves were busy with instructions from the control tower, which again, was managed by a woman.  The voices from the pilots, however, were mainly men, with the exception of one voice.

After two days in the bush, the bustle of a busy airport was a little bit overwhelming.  Despite that we had re-fueling down pat and managed not to give anyone a heart attack by offering payment in plastic.  We were then instructed to park at the end of a long line of planes and make our way into the building (again without any accompanying security personnel) to pay landing charges and file flight plans.  On our way across the tarmac, we were greeted by a tall, beautiful, New Zealand woman named Aman.  She had a stride that was at least twice ours, making us run to keep up with her.  She was instantly curious about the three middle aged women shuffling across the airfield.  As it turns out, she'd heard Catherine on the airwaves and sought us out because female pilots are not a dime a dozen in that part of the world.  (Or, maybe anywhere for that matter.)  Once she found out what we were up to, she tried to talk her way into the group.  While that might have been fun, she was really tall and would have put a major dent in our ability to carry alcohol, so instead of offering up our only empty seat, Catherine started asking questions:  Can you land at Tsodilo Hills?  What is the airstrip like at Nxamaseri?  Do you have the latest weather?  And, most importantly, do you happen to have a spare map?  As luck would have it, she didn't but was able to get us one...not a great one, but a well-loved, well used, coffee-stained map.  It was ours to keep and it was perfect.

No mirage here!

Map in hand, flight plans logged, re-fueling complete and yet another security point behind us (all of which was becoming at least familiar, if not old hat) we headed back to Dixie for the 30 minute flight north to Nxamaseri.

We had done enough advance reading to understand that we were about to see a big change in scenery.  Knowing and seeing, however, are two very different things.  In the course of about 20 miles the pans that we'd been seeing for 100 miles went from bone dry to true ponds.  Yes, you could still see salt on the sides, but there was real water, in them, not a mirage.  As we journeyed further north, the pans started to disappear and we began to clearly see rivers.  All of a sudden it felt like we might need life jackets in the unlikely event of a water landing.What a difference a few miles make!

It's so amazing, it needs to be in the blog twice.

Carl told Catherine and Zabeta that we should be on the lookout for the cloverleaf.  That is was a  very famous part of the Okavango Delta and when we got there, we'd know.  Turns out the cloverleaf looks a lot more like Casper the Ghost (with only one eye...maybe he's in profile?) than a cloverleaf...in any case, Carl was  right, it is quite recognizable and really amazing from the air.

No Bovine or wind here.

From that point, we had our dead reckoning fix and we knew that Nxamaseri was nearby.

We'd been warned not to land at the short airstrip until we had verbal confirmation from the lodge.  Apparently the grass strip doubles as pastureland, so in order not to have an unfortunate bovine encounter on landing, the lodge crew clears the runway prior to all arrivals.

This seemed like a prudent course, so we duly called in and confirmed a clear runway.  Then, using our belt and suspenders caution, we buzzed the runway twice to ensure that no stray cattle were missed in the clearing process.  With that confirmed, and wind direction from the sock (none) identified we proceeded to land.

Watch your feet....those mounds are not mole hills!

It was only after taxing, securing the aircraft (being careful to avoid cow pies) and hauling our luggage across the strip, did we realize that we were on an island.  Our transfer to the lodge was via boat, and the lodge itself was on another island.  This couldn't be any more different from Deception Valley if we tried to make it so.

As we picked our way past the cow pies and looked out into our new world, we were overcome with water....lush and wet and beautiful.










We weren't sure what would be in store for us, but we knew it would be good.  And so our adventure and wonder continued!

No dust here.