The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 17: My Worries and Concerns Live On

It’s morning at the lovely Thamalakane hotel in Maun, Botswana.   I am lying in bed in my cottage, savoring the air-conditioned coolness and thinking about our agenda for the day.

 

We are to enjoy a day-long outing in a mokoro, along with a one-hour nature walk.   A mokoro is a traditional means of travel through the Okavango Delta waterways.   It’s a dugout canoe propelled by a person who stands at the rear and poles the small vessel through the channels lined with vegetation, and thus those people are called polers.

I wasn’t sure about this mokoro thing.   I’ve seen the videos of elephants and hippos attacking these itty-bitty canoes,  tipping them over, and worse.   

I’ve seen photos and videos of mokoros with seats with four legs that lift a passenger quite high above the keel, making the mokoros look incredibly top-heavy and subject to overturning with no assistance needed from huge beasts

But what’s an adventure without a threat of danger? Just my kind of adventure.  Remember when I zip-lined across the second gorge at Victoria Falls while crocodiles waited below?  I am determined to participate, and I set most of my concerns aside.

After breakfast, we meet at the appointed time in the common area.   To my surprise, we load up in vehicles that will transport us to the embarkation site.   We aren’t, after all, going to amble down the lawn to the riverside in front of the lodge and board the mokoros there.

 

I had checked out those mokoros at a distance—at a distance because wandering along a riverbank is not conducive to keeping the number of tourists at an optimal level.   Crocs, you know.

The mokoros are the boats up on the shore, not the covered passenger boat.

 

I am outfitted in a light green visor, newly purchased at the curio shop to replace the one I’d lost at Dinaka lodge.  That one most likely took up residence in a Toyota Land Cruiser.   Why wasn’t it on my head?   Because it kept blowing off.   I considered using a camera strap to tether it to myself, like I did in Brazil, but never got around to it.

I have been wearing a visor ever since cataract surgery a few years ago because artificial lenses let in much more light than the lenses we are born with.   Those OEM lenses--Original Equipment Manufacture parts, I call them.

   And, something I have yet to explain, if the light hits my eyes at a certain angle, I can’t see ANYTHING through my camera viewfinder.   It’s completely black.

 

Anyway, the new visor is a light green—one of the neutral colors they recommend you wear on safari, like other shades of green, khaki, and the like.   Blending in is the rule.

Here I am just a-styling with my new visor.   I forget who took this photo, or I would render praise to whom it is due.

My visor has giraffes on it.  It matches my green giraffe sort.   The green tie around my neck is filled with absorbent pellets and was soaked in water.   It helps keep me cool.   And, the shirt is an SPF shirt that blocks ultraviolet rays.   That, too, helps with not turning into a broiled brisket.

 

Second surprise:   it’s an hour-long drive, which also means it’s an hour-long drive back.   That certainly eats into the "all-day excursion."

Off we go, and after stopping along the roadside in a small village to pick up our picnic lunch from a lady waiting for us, we eventually arrive at a beautiful location along a thickly-vegetated waterway, which is the launching site

The white things are water lilies.

 

We have a bit of time at the launch site, enough for me to take a few photos, watch some cattle cross a channel into some lush grass, and consider once again the wisdom of doing this—a consideration rebirthed by looking at the mokoros themselves:

These are not wooden dugouts.  These are replicas made of fiberglass, and the paint and resin that once contributed to their construction and finish are having a hard time remaining attached.

Not sure what the hole in the back is, but all the mokoros have them.  The pole is called a nkashi.

To my relief, there are seats with backs, and they don’t sit high above the keel. They are perfect.   You simply sit on them with your legs stretched in front.  You can turn the seat left and right, being careful not to overbalance the mokoro.

The seats appear to be repurposed from plastic chairs.   One has a crack in the backrest and pinches the occupier when stressed just right.

Flat-bottomed for stability, and a narrow hull for gliding through water vegetation.

Marg is behind me, getting her camera ready.

 

Finally, we are off.   The polers push the mokoros (and us) off the sandy beach, then wade in to turn the boat and climb in.   Off through the water lilies we go.

 

So, here are some things we saw until a hippo blocked our way:

A great egret.

A tree I liked.

Cattle grazing.

Another great egret.

A poler spotted an animal way off in the distance, so Shelly climbed onto a mound with him to check it out.   I wasn't carrying my camera with the long lens, so I stayed seated in my mokoro.

A great egret in flight.

 

The hippo blocking our way.

The polers struggled to get us to shore once they saw the hippo.  The vegetation was thick and difficult to pole through.

Once on the island, we walked up to a high point where some trees offered shade from the very hot sun.   After a nice lunch, with plenty of cold water, we went on our nature hike.

Hauling lunch and water from where we had to beach the mokoros.   The hippo is off to the right, but not in the photo.   Bottom left is one of the seats we used.

This was such a pleasant spot.

L-R in front are Sylvia, Alison, and Erin.   At back are Laura, Shelly, and Marg.   Randy, Virginia,  and I are not shown.   Cory opted to stay at the hotel.

All the usual suspects, but now Virginia has joined them at the far right.

Marg

Malabou stork.

I was having a hard time walking as fast as everyone else wanted to walk.  The sun was really getting to me, but I persevered, despite Marg trying to nanny me into admitting it was too much for me.   I was still recovering my stamina after major abdominal surgery with significant complications.

They even put me at the head of the line, but that soon dissolved into various lines as some broke formation.

A couple of elephants

This plant, which is similar in appearance to saw palmetto, is chewed by elephants to clean their teeth of any fibrous particles that might be stuck in their molars.

The tan stuff at lower right is a wad of elephant " chewing gum."

 

Our very nice guide pointed out plants of interest, especially one that he called “elephant chewing gum.”   It’s a plant similar to the saw palmetto of the southeastern United States.

 Finally, I called uncle.   It was too hot, and I could not keep up.

Some of the water lilies are lavender.

This post is getting too long,   

All in all, it was a pleasant and relaxing way to spend a nice day before once again getting involved in the hectic hubbub of travel.  

 I do not mean to make fun of this outing, but, I will tell you what I told our group organizers.   It was my impression that this company was an example of a native enterprise, trying to operate on a shoestring to compete with the larger and better-financed tourist-oriented businesses.  More power to them.

 Tomorrow is a travel day again.  Off to Johannesburg in South Africa.

In the meantime, however, there have been several discussions at various times among our group that have been worrying me.   That’s the next chapter.

 

 

The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 16: We Can't Get There from Here

 

    It’s our last morning at Dinaka Lodge and the Dinaka Game Reserve, an area of semi-arid desert with acacia scrublands, which borders the northern edge of the Central  Kalahari Game Reserve.

    Our next destination is the Mashatu Game Reserve in southeastern Botswana, but there’s a problem with that!

The Central Kalahari is shown as an irregular hexagon in green .   Maun is due north.   Our next destination is Mashatu Game Reserve, shown at the far right point of land.

 

    Today, we confront the old canard, “You can’t get there from here.”

 

    That’s right.     To get to Mashatu, we need to catch a charter flight to Maun, a city located just north of Dinaka, where we will stay for two nights.  Then a scheduled airline flight will take us to Johannesburg in South Africa, where we will overnight once again at City Lodge.

      From there, a chartered flight to the privately-owned Mashatu airstrip.   It's a long way around, but that's how things are sometimes in Africa, particularly here, as there are no direct flights to Mashatu from Maun.   It's a privately-owned reserve with a private airstrip, and entry is controlled.

     First, though, we will make a short game drive into the semi-arid country of Dinaka Game Reserve.   All our luggage is packed and ready to fly out, except our cameras, of course.

Pale chanting goshawk.

Yellow-billed hawk.

Black-backed jackals.   Very calm and patient as we photographed them.

A Lifer animal for me--yellow mongoose.

    I took the photo below for two reasons.   One, the yellow mongoose are almost dead center, but the important reason is to show the kind of "roads" or "trails" we traveled on in the reserve.   These, being adjacent to the Kalahari desert, are sand.   Many of the roads in reserves in Kenya can be muddy.   Muddy like you've never seen before--except on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian Chain in Alaska, where a semi truck driver told me he could see waves of mud rolling in front of his truck, like ocean swells.   The mud was over his large tires.

Morning coffee/tea break with Booth

When one has coffee/tea breaks, there must be a place for um.... a girl bush.   In this case, the back side of a termite mound works well.

We see the Burchell's zebra foal again.   Burchell's zebras have a thin brown line between the usual zebra stripes.

And, of course, the male rhino was guarding his trail.

We said adieu to the loud and unusual Northern korhaan, another Lifer bird for me.

    Then, it's off to the airstrip for our Mack Air charter.

    A word about these small charter aircraft that serve much of Africa:   You seldom know until the day before or the day of your chartered flight what time it will arrive.  That's because the operators try to coordinate flights where they bring new guests to a place where they pick up returning guests.  The logistics of these flights must be incredibly complex.   

Factor into that that many people must be back at an international airport to catch their flights home.   I suspect that is why many return flights out of Africa leave near midnight.

A video of our Mack flight:

Happy to see a woman pilot.   I have been seeing more and more women get into aviation in Africa.

    And shortly,  we arrive in Maun, where a vehicle picks us up for a long, 19km drive (about 11 miles) on a road that is a mixture of partly paved and partly potholed, to Thamalakane Lodge.   Pronunciation is tricky, but I think it's tha-mah-lah-KAH-nay.   It's located on a gentle river of the same name that is part of the vast Okavango Delta system.

    Our arrival is delayed as one of our group (NOT ME) suddenly announces that she left a small bag with her passport in it, hanging on a hook in the women's restroom at the airport.   We turn around, go back over the postholes and pavement and she retrieves her bag intact.

Our cottage here.

What a nice welcome.

Do you see what's on the wall to the left of Sylvia?   It's an air conditioning unit that went on and never went off as long as we stayed here.

Very nice bathroom.

    

    The group has a relaxing get-together in the lounge.   It was here that we realized we were in a hotel, not a lodge as we photographers have come to expect of a lodge.   Our group organizers booked us here on the recommendation of a trusted source.

    Mind you, it's a very nice lodge with a helpful. and accommodating staff.  I would recommend it to anyone needing a place to stay in Maun.    It isn't a bush lodge, though.

The view in front of the lodge.

A magpie shrike.   Its long tail is hidden behind the post.

Tropical boubou, another kind of shrike.

    After a nice buffet dinner, it was off to bed.   Tomorrow, we will have an adventure.   We are scheduled to take a long ride in a mokoro on the river.   A mokoro, or makoro, is a dugout canoe, a traditional way to travel in Botswana's Okavango Delta.

    And, we are in for another surprise or two.