Oddball's Camp At Okavango Delta

Saturday, July 2
I made it to Oddball's Camp and they set me up alone in one of the two person tents. There's an adjacent bathroom with an outdoor shower. The whole thing is up on stilts above the water, with a dirt path leading from the dining area.

Each day we rise at 6:30 for coffee and muffins before we get in a mokoro for the day's activities. Mokoros are like canoes created from a big sausage tree log that is dug out. The guide propels it with a long stick, the same way a gondolier might. Most of the area is shallow water with reeds and grass. Each tent at the lodge is assigned a guide and he takes one or two people in his mokoro out to one of the many islands for nature walks.

We return around 10:00 for breakfast and then relax around the camp for a few hours. Lunch is at 2:30, and then there is a second mokoro trip. We return in time for the sunset, about 5:30-6:00, and have dinner at 7:00. I repeated this for each of the three days I stayed at the camp.

My guide's name is MD. He took me to four islands, a deep water pool they call the hippo pool, and the village where he lives. We saw a lot of impalas, elephants, and zebras, but the highlight was the lazy hyena that allowed us within 20 feet before deciding to move somewhere else. It looked like a big teddy bear and would alternate between lying down and sitting up to watch us.

The World Cup quarterfinals began on Friday, so I asked one of the staffers at Oddball's, KT, if there was a place to watch. He had a generator and satellite dish in his house in small staff village near the camp and he invited me to watch there. It was a small, single room house with only a candle for light. I sat there with KT and three of his friends watching the Ghana-Uruguay match on the tiny TV screen in his room.

Today is my last day in Botswana. I took a plane from the camp back to Maun and I await my flight from here to Johannesburg. Tomorrow I will depart from there to Minneapolis by way of Nairobi, Amsterdam, and Paris. The trip to Okavango Delta has been a great way to end the trip. The people of Botswana are attractive and polite and the land and wildlife are incredible. I would like to return some day; there is much more to see: Victoria Falls, Chobe National Park, and Kalahari Game Reserve.