Day 102- Okavango Delta 13/1/13

Back into Botswana and a short ferry ride - decidedly difficult to get our truck onto the pontoon but it got there in the end, with the help of a few nearby rocks.

Then we drove for several hours along a road that can best be described as a non made up mud track, until we arrived in the heart of the Okavango delta (the river starts its journey in Angola and ends with its waters dividing into a multitude of different streams, before it "disappears" into the sands of the desert - the start of the Kalahari).

The Okavango is the world's largest inland delta at something like ten times the size of London and to reach our campsite we transhipped, with luggage, cooking equipment etc into a mini fleet of marokos (canoes that were originally made out of an ebony tree, but now made from fibreglass). These are "driven" by a local with a long pole so in fact rather similar in principle to punting. Lonely Planet describes this as gliding along in peace and serenity, which is exactly how it is - and at quite a high speed, through endless channels between masses of hippograss and towering papyrus.

We camped and ate our meal under great amarula trees (where the drink comes from), but not before we had gone out again in our marokos for a sunset cruise. This soon changed into a "thunder and lightning" cruise as we seemed to be sandwiched between two sets of black storm clouds (no sun of course) with great flashes of fork and sheet lightning and massive cracks of thunder that went on for ages - fantastic!