While most travellers come to Botswana’s famed Okavango Delta for the ultimate jeep safari, some insist Africa’s swamp-like wonderland is best seen by boat.
The ride out was a little unnerving. As we hummed across the water in the cool of the morning, zipping down waterways only as wide as the motorboat itself, I was mindful of the fact that in just a few minutes, I would be nearly even with the water, paddling through the tall reeds and swaying papyrus in a traditional makoro (canoe). But it wasn’t the riverside foliage that made me nervous; it was the abundant, exotic wildlife that called the murky swamp home.
First, we skirted past a grumpy looking hippo, his head popping above the waterline just long enough to express his displeasure with an angry snort. Then we skimmed past a monitor lizard – harmless, but creepy nonetheless. Finally, we slowed to take in the sight of not one, but two crocodiles. Neither was fully grown, and I shuddered as I took in their white, jagged teeth. They sunk – slowly, silently, menacingly – below the dark, almost-black waterline.
I was on the 60,000-hectare Jao Concession, a vast tract of land – most of it underwater even in the driest part of the dry season – in the heart of Botswana’s famed Okavango Delta. While most travellers come to the Okavango for the ultimate jeep safari, experienced visitors have told me that, in many ways, Botswana is a country that’s best seen from the water. So I was here in what is arguably Africa’s greatest aquatic landscape – where the mighty Okavango River drops from the Angolan highlands, spreading across 15,000sqkm of southern Africa as it flows toward its ultimate end in the Kalahari Desert – to take in its best features from canoe-level view.
It was here that the makoro was born. A traditional mode of transport long used by Okavango locals, these dugout canoes are small, narrow and rudderless – perfect for navigating waters that routinely ebb to a depth of just a few inches toward the end of late autumn, before seasonal rains turn the landscape into a soggy, green aquatic wonderland. And the Okavango is one of the few places in the world where traditional makoros – carved from the wood of an African ebony tree – are still used. Due to government efforts to save more of these valuable, old trees, modern-day makoros are increasingly made of fiberglass.
We docked the motorboat and I climbed into the makoro, the sides snug around me. My guide, Boikago Wandumbi, paddled he and I out, standing in the back of the canoe like a Venetian gondolier, using a long pole to propel us forward.
The first thing I noticed is that the makoro was rather tippy – the absence of a keel made it easy for the boat to spill from side to side. The second thing was the silence. In a jeep, the engine is always running, drowning out the sounds of the savannah and swamp. Here, the makoro made only the slightest rippling sound. In the background, I heard the chirps and squawks of birds, the buzz of insects, the small, sudden surge of water as a tropical fish jumped into the air for just a split second. No manmade sounds intruded. I was immersed in an environment that had remained fundamentally untouched and unaltered for centuries.
Wandumbi broke the silence by pointing out the amazing array of birds that perched and flew nearby. I looked high into the trees to see solitary fish eagles scoping out their lunch below. I saw red egrets, white cormorants, diminutive but determined kingfishers and the extravagantly ugly marabou stork. As we glided past lily pads and reeds, the beautiful saddle-billed stork with its black-and-white body and tricolour beak swooped overhead; I could almost feel the flap of its wings.
Wandumbi told me about the many ways that the makoro has long been central in the lives of locals. He noted that people have traditionally used the boats to fish for bream, tilapia and tiger fish and to gather fruit to eat, roots for medicine and water sage to weave into mats. They even used the makoro for long distance, multi-day voyages to Maun, the closest town of any size, with families fishing and frying their quarry in the sand-insulated bottom of the boats along the way.
He illustrated his point by paddling into a patch of green undergrowth and pulling out a lily pad, turning its roots into a necklace and the pad into a hat (complete with a rather fetching lily on top), which he wore for the remainder of our trip – a skill his parents taught him as a child. “I have been paddling a makoro since I was nine years old,” Wandumbi said. “It was the school bus of the delta. I used to paddle my younger brothers and sisters to class.”
We angled close to the thick growth along the side of the swamp, drawing close to a sitatunga, an antelope rarely seen outside the deepest, densest parts of the area. With hooves adapted for walking in marshes, the shy animal usually hides deep in the swamp. Today, its horned head and brown back were poking out of the reeds. We watched for a few seconds before it noticed us and loped off, deep into the green.
Almost immediately afterward, we spotted another rare find. Parking the boat in a reed bed, Wandumbi motioned to my right: “That – right there – is the leopard of the swamp.” He was talking about a tiny painted reed frog, head skyward, clinging to a piece of vegetation, carefully blended with its surroundings. It was so small, I would have completely overlooked it exploring the Delta by any other means.
Soon, we left the makoro and headed back to camp in the motorboat. Skimming through the same narrow channels that had carried us there – very close to the shallow waters that we had just paddled – we encountered elephants, two big bulls waving their ears to cool their blood and digging deep into the papyrus plants to eat sweet, sugary roots. I was glad to encounter the large pachyderms in the relative security of the bigger boat.
At the same time, a part of me missed the makoro – the silence and peacefulness, not to mention the great and unique privilege of experiencing first-hand its time-honoured presence in the delta. It helped, too, that in the end, I didn’t tip into the water, forced to flee from the tiger fish and crocodiles.
Practicalities
A number of Expert Africa trips specialise in water-based adventures, including makoro trips. Jao Camp, operated by Wilderness Safaris, comprises tented rooms connected by raised walkways, as well as a full-service spa and two swimming pools.