Okavango Delta

Full disclosure, these are not our photos.  We're at an internet cafe right now, without access to our pictures, so I pulled them off of the web to show some representative images.  Mokoros at sunset, great white shark cage diving, elephants pictured from a plane in the delta, and the delta pictured from space.

 

First, we went great white shark cage diving in Cape Town on our last day there.  Gansbaai is one of the most famous bays in the world for great whites, with 1,200 of the 5,000 individual great whites of the world travel through in a given year.  "Shark Alley" is the stretch of water between two islands that support a fur seal colony of 60,000 seals, so the food source for the sharks is abundant.  Once we were out on the boat and near where the sharks hung out, we chummed the water.  This meant that we filled a 50 gallon drum with fish skeletons and meat chunks, then ran water through the barrel and let it trickle into the ocean.  20 minutes later, there were 4 great whites swimming around the boat and it was time to get in the cage. 

 

The water was 50 degrees so wetsuits were needed.  No snorkels, no scuba gear, so you take big breaths of water and then duck your head under and watch the sharks through the mask.  It can be tough to know where the sharks are coming from, so the people on the boat (7 fit in the cage at one time) yell at you to tell you which direction to look.  You run out of breath, pop your head up for air, then immediately hear "Divers! Down right!  Look right!  Get underwater!"  With the freezing water, yelling, and 16 foot sharks right in front of you, it isn't a relaxing experience, but unique and spectacular.

 

The boat isn't allowed to feed the sharks, but there was a bundle of fish heads that the sharks would bite at, and you get a close-up appreciation of how large their mouths are and how aggressive they can be when it is time to eat something.

 

Yesterday morning we went into the Okavango Delta on mokoros, flat-bottomed canoes that are propelled via a long pole used by a person standing at the back.  It is the wet season (fall) here in Botswana so the water levels are high and the entire delta area is lush and green.  This is the world's largest inland delta, where an entire river just sort of spills into the interior of the country rather than into a lake or ocean.  We took a scenic flight two days ago that gave a great overview of the area.  You could see the main channels of the river and then the expansive wetland areas of reeds.  Within all the water there are islands of dry land and lots of different vegetation types to attract wildlife.  From the plane (a 15-seater) we saw 5 giraffes, a couple herds of water  buffalo, 50+ African elephants, and several small groups of antelope.  The grassy and reeded areas have many animal paths that criss-cross everywhere you look, which are one of the best indicators of how many large animals this ecosystem can support.

 

We camped overnight on one of the small islands, and could hear hippos grunting at night, but didn't have any sightings or encounters.  Prior to getting into the mokoro our guide told us a cautionary tale about a German woman who went exploring alone in the night after hearing some noises.  He didn't finish the story and we had to approach him later to ask what happened to her.  "Oh, right.  She was killed," was his casual response.

 

We went on guided game walks the first night in the delta and the following morning and saw zebra, 2 elephants, and a variety of antelope.  Out of internet time.