Mokoro Ride at Little Vumbura

The Okavango Delta, which is an inland delta, covers over six thousand square miles of waterways, palm filled islands and lagoons. It is the greatest natural sanctuary left in Africa- providing a home to the greatest number of animal, bird and plant species in the Southern Hemisphere. Our mokoro traversed the flood plains under the guidance of our poler Mos, a member of the BaYei tribe. The people of the BaYei tribe have been using the mokoro as their main form of transportation for hundreds of years.

Here are a few of the things we saw from our mokoro as we made our way out to a small island...













One term that we heard a lot when we were on safari was "Boys Choir". This term basically describes a bachelor group of animals who are all hanging out together, waiting for their turn to face a dominant male and a chance to mate. Usually, we heard the term associated with the large groups of male Impala we saw. Here is a photo of our 'Boys Choir' taken once we reached the island during our mokoro adventure:


left to right: Oliver, Ed, James, Mos, James and Lazarus

And here is our group as we returned to camp:



It was now Wednesday, May 20th and we were scheduled to depart in the afternoon for our next camp, Savuti. Here's a shot of the back deck area of our tent at Little Vumbura Camp:



We were surrounded by water and at night we would hear the hippos sloshing around - elephants visited us also. The staff at Vumbura was fantastic and we especially enjoyed our host/manager Boyson. Here James says goodbye:



Here's the walkway to the boat launch area:



We made our way to the runway, with plenty of time to spare... that was until we ran into a problem. A BIG PROBLEM. We found a cranky bull elephant had decided to have his lunch right on the runway. Lazarus decided we needed to push him back, before there was an 'elephant vs. airplane' confrontation!









The funniest part was that Lazarus kept yelling to the elephant, "Go Away, the Plane is Coming!!" That big boy was having none of it! He stomped his feet and made all kinds of noise while slowing backing off. But, he let us know that he was NOT happy about it!!