Delta Days…

Audi Camp, Maun – Okavango Delta

S 19^º 56’ 07” – E 23º 31’ 01”

Our “detour” through Botswana…

On arrival at Audi Camp, a pack of five dogs had rushed out to greet me. We later discovered that they are referred to as the “complaints department”… Ron the manager owns the largest of the dogs, a ridgeback, which follows him wherever he goes, and has the run of the place, including the kitchen, which he keeps clear of feral cats…

When Allan arrived, he had asked where the BMW camp was, as we preferred that over the Audi… The receptionist rolled her eyes at this and explained that “Audi” means Fish Eagle in the local dialect of Setswana… Satisfied with this explanation, we had settled into “Luxury Tent” No: 4, which looked down onto the Thamalakane River. We had to negotiate a steep and rocky track to get the bikes close to the tent, and getting back out again after heavy rain the following day, proved a tricky operation… We had to get used to these “tricky operations” as they seemed to rear their heads almost every day…

This painting in the bar confirms that Audi Camp “rocks” in the high season…

On Thursday, after a large breakfast, we rode into town on the bikes to buy various bits and pieces for Allan’s bike so that he could make a few running repairs… We had also hoped to collect his camera which was supposed to have been DHL’ed from Windhoek on Monday… At the DHL offices, we discovered that there was no package for Allan, and after numerous calls to Windhoek, he finally determined that his camera had not been collected on Monday as had been arranged, but instead, it was picked up on Tuesday, and was now “safely in Johannesburg”… He was told it might arrive the following day… We spent an hour at one of the local internet cafes where Allan updated his website with the entries he had been working on the night before… I managed to send a few chapters of my own journal through to my sister Charmaine…

Having the afternoon free, (we had our secretaries cancel all our appointments…) we decided to book a flight over the Delta and proceeded to Moremi Air, where we convinced a German couple to charter the flight with us, so that we could all share in the costs… After much arm-twisting and cajoling, they finally agreed… We were in the air a few minutes later, heading over the Delta. We flew directly north from Maun, over the “buffalo control fence” and on towards Chief’s Island. Once there we turned east and made a wide loop over the waterlogged landscape and arrived back in Maun, a little more than an hour later… My camera had begun acting up, and I was unable to take any decent photos, but the flight was a fantastic experience…  

Tributaries of the Okavango River weave their way across the flood plains of the Delta…

We saw herds of elephant, buffalo, impala and thousands of hippo…we disturbed a journey of Giraffe, who lumbered away beneath us, across an open section of the plains. Water splashed up from their hooves, and not for the first time, I wished I had brought the big camera with me on this trip… I had decided to travel with only my two small digital cameras, and on a number of occasions thus far had regretted this decision…

We flew through a patch of rain, and the little Cessna bucked and bounced through the air, causing Frank the German, who was sitting directly behind me, to make a few retching noises… I turned to see if he was ok, and looked into a face which had turned an unusual shade of grey…. His eyes were closed and his wife was patting his arm in a motherly fashion… I had visions of my neck being painted with the contents of his last meal, and moved over to sit directly in front of his wife, all the while taking the mickey out of him….(he had already paid for his share of the flight, so I was immune from any monetary form of retribution…)

Back on Terra Firma after out flight over the Delta…

We rode back to Audi Camp, which is about 12km outside of Maun itself, but not before purchasing a few obligatory bottles of wine… That night it poured with rain again, and the wind blew from directly in front of our tent, bringing rain into the tent through the screen door…. The next morning, my soaking bedding had to be changed and carpets dragged out and hung up outside to dry… We went to reception and suggested a screen be put up over the doorway, and minutes later a guy arrived with a piece of canvas, and nailed it over the screen door… While he was doing this, Allan kept up a running commentary wanting to use his video camera to record the occasion… The maintenance man just shook his head while driving nails into the beams on either side of the door… “Let’s find something else for him to fix!” Allan said from the bathroom area… I joined the maintenance guy in shaking my head in exasperation… I motioned for him to finish quickly and get the hell out of there before Allan came up with more for him to do…

Later that morning, Allan went off on a Makoro safari into the Delta, while I hung around camp, sorting out my tank bag which had worked loose on a number of occasions, and writing up my journal. I lay down on the narrow camp cot and tried to catch forty winks… But sleep wouldn’t come… I was listening to a Bob Dylan track that struck such a deep chord within me, that I felt compelled to mess about with some of the lyrics and came up with the following…

“Our Solden conversation was short and not at all sweet…

Your words tore the world out from under my feet

And now I’m riding out here in this rain,

And you’re a long way away,

Determined to make it on your own somehow,

Because you’re a free girl now…

There’s a bird on the horizon, sitting on a fence,

He’ll sing a song for me, at his own expense…

And I’m just like that bird,

I’ll sing any song just for you…

Even though I know that you can’t hear…

Hear me singing through these tears…

This bike is like a jet-plane… it can move so fast…

It can take me away from you and my past…

And what a shame that all we had can’t last…

I’ll make any changes, I swore…

Asked you to see what you could do…

It shook me to the core…

When you said that we were through,

Love is so simple, to quote a phrase…

I’ve known it all the time,

And hope that you’ll find this out some day…

You’ll know where to find me,

If you take the time to look,

Just name your price and I’ll pay…

Travel any distance, go all the way…

Changes in the weather can be extreme,

But what’s the sense of changing

Horses in midstream…

And I’m going out of my mind

With a pain that stops and starts…

Like a corkscrew in my heart…

Ever since we’ve been apart…”

******

In the late afternoon, dressed in shorts and t-shirt, I rode into town to see if the internet café was operational… The power was off and the whole of Maun had come to a virtual standstill… I cruised up and down the main drag, through puddles of water left after the storm from the night before… I stopped at a café and bought a Coke and a packet of crisps, then sat watching the world, his dog and his donkey, go by, until the power came back on…

It had drizzled and rained throughout the day, and I wondered how Allan was coping with the weather out in the Delta… I knew that he had a two hour drive through the swamps to get to the area from where the Mokoros set out, and then a few hours of paddling and hiking through the reserve before having to endure the long drive back again…

Rain lashes Audi Camp in the late afternoon of the 17^th….

I needn’t have been concerned, as Allan returned in high spirits, having had some spectacular sighting of Hippo, Elephant and other wildlife whilst on the Makoro, and also while doing a two hour walk through the floodplains… I helped identify some of the birds he had taken photos of and he settled down at the bar with his laptop, to update his website. I wandered over to the reception area to chat to the staff on duty… They asked about the “mad American” and I pointed across the parking area to the bar where Allan was bashing away at the keys of his laptop…

“Is he always saying such crazy things?” they asked…

“Yes,” I said… “Always…”

“It is our first time to meet such a person!” they said…

“Me too…” I replied, “Me too…”…

“He wants us to put his motorbike on a Makoro…” one of them said in exasperation…

“He’s been trying to do that since we arrived in the Caprivi,” I told them.

“Aii, aii…” the guy said clicking his tongue, “That man is crazy! There are many hippos in the river, and they will destroy this bike…”

“I’ll try and talk him out of it,” I promised, as I walked back towards the bar…

“Yes, please do!!” they chorused…

“You’ve got the staff all hot under the collar with your request to put your bike on a Makoro,” I said to Allan.

“Oh really…? But never mind that, what’s that bird we saw hovering over the river yesterday?”

“A Pied Kingfisher,” I replied.

“Ah, yes… How do you spell that?”

“P-I-E-D” I spelled out for him…

“Mmmm…and that small one that we saw on the reeds?”

“Malachite Kingfisher.”

“How do you spell that?”…

“M-A-L-A-C-H-I-T-E”…

“What about that big stork we saw?”

“That was a Goliath Heron, not a stork…”

“How do you spell that?”

“Surely you can spell Goliath!!”

“Are you going to help me, or should I just write Big Heron?”…

“G-O-L-I-A-T-H…”…

“Are you sure?”…

It was going to be a long afternoon I thought, and ordered another round of Windhoek Lagers to ward off the thirst I knew was bound to build up while I sat there spelling words for Allan…

Allan tries to convince the receptionist to book his bike onto a Mokoro for a trip into the Delta…

The swimming pool and public area at Audi Camp…

We had dinner with Ron the owner who has been in Maun for over five years. He kept us entertained with anecdotes about the local and ex-pat community… Maun is not the sleepy little town it is made out to be… Imagine scenes from “White Mischief”… Lots of “scandal” happening in Maun…

We intended leaving as early as possible the next day, bound for Kasane, and decided an early night would be a very good idea… Our GPS’s confirmed that it would take us about eight hours to reach our destination, a full days riding…

We packed all out kit in readiness for the next day and prayed that it would not rain that night, or the following morning… I chatted to Allan about the next days ride, explaining that we had a long way to go, and had not managed to arrange any firm accommodation in Kasane… It was therefore a good idea to try and get there as early as possible, in case we battled to find a place to stay…

What I was trying to say was;

“SHAKE THE LEAD OUT TOMORROW!!” and

“LEAVE THE LOCALS ALONE!!” and lastly,

“STOP CHASING THE FRIGGING DONKEYS OUT OF THE ROAD, YOU’RE WASTING TIME!!”…

He mumbled something that seemed to end with “….worse than my Mother…” then rolled over and was asleep in minutes…

Ringo, of the “Complaints Department”, seemed taken by the bikes and we often found him lying in their shade or sitting close by…

© 2008 TBMH