It’s way better to visit that to say. Located in central Botswana the Okavango Delta is a massive tangle of rivers and waterways that are feed from the Okavango River.
The only way into the Delta is in shallow-draft canoes and pushed along by wooden poles. The original canoes were made from hollowed-out tree trunks called a mokoro.
Today the canoes are fiberglass, but the method of propulsion is the same as it was hundreds of years ago. One man stands in the back with a long pole and moves the boat forward by pushing off of the shallow bottom of the waterway.
The journey through the delta is quiet and peaceful as you pole along. The only care in the world was making sure we didn’t sneak up on a hippo. We didn’t see any hippos our entire time in the delta which I am perfectly fine with.
Hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa, killing more people every year than almost all other species combined. So like I said, I was ok not seeing them while in a small canoe in their home territory.
For me, the most beautiful part of poling through the narrow channels of the Okavango Delta was the gnarly trees and their reflections on the calm water. The Delta has the feeling of being in a far removed from the rest of the world. The isolation only enhanced the beauty and relaxed vibe of the place.
There wasn’t much else happening on the thousands of islands that make up the Okavango Delta. Just the wildlife peacefully going about their business like they have for thousands of years.
In fact, it was so peaceful we didn’t even see many of the residents of the Delta. They left us alone to enjoy the peaceful calm reflections and the sunsets.
To finish the day we were treated with a nice orange African sunset along the shores of our campsite. A group of us gathered to watched the sun sink into the Delta over our canoes for the evening. We spent two days paddling our narrow canoes up and down the Okavango Delta with Acacia Africa in late may of 2014.