Botyburps

We left Ghanzi and drove 350 km to the Okavango Delta. On NZ quality roads at 120km/hr which is the speed limit here, this would take around 3 hrs. There was an extremely heavy rainy season just ended and the northern half of the trip had massive potholes everywhere to the point that there were more potholes than road. To make things worse, herds of goats would get into the potholes and eat the asphalt around the edges; don’t ask me why, perhaps it is goat licorice to them? So the trip ended up taking over 6 hours. We need to plan for the unexpected!

After a long days travel we arrived at the pickup point for Nguma Lodge. Nguma is the Setswana name for the large lagoon at the top of the Okavango Delta. The lodge is reached by using a large military style troop carrier driving for about 12km through the swamp.

Glamping again in tents above the swamp on poles. Everything has to be stored inside because of thieving monkeys. Then next morning we took a wild life spotting boat cruise around the lagoon and swamp. We were the only 2 tourists here at first as it is just the start of the season so we had the cruise to ourselves. In order, we saw hippos (not too close), crocodiles (up to 6m), Sitatunga antelope calf (twice! These are extremely rare and hard to photograph) and countless birdlife,

This was in the vicinity of the 6m crocodile so it may have been stalking it. The other predator of these antelope are pythons!