Last full post on the Okavango Delta! I hope you’ve found this area captivating through photos, as I was so enchanted by it in person.

Both afternoons our polers navigate us to this swimming hole. It’s really just a safe area with no dangerous wildlife (hippos, crocs, etc.) waiting to surprise unsuspecting swimmers.

The water is shockingly cold — even though the air is hot with a side of humid. We go swimming around 3:30pm and it cools down my body temperature for the rest of the afternoon.

Here’s my poler Amos enjoying the cool water:

Amos shows us how to make necklaces out of the flowers that grow by water lilies — just snap the stem and then peel it back, repeating every two inches until you have a chain long enough to loop around your neck.

Tanya shows off the finished product:

Later that night the staff at Elephant Bush Camp presents about 45 minutes of cultural songs and dance. It’s festive and joyful to watch.

Do you know what they call performing around the campfire here? African television. That cracks me up.

For one particular number, the men pad their gut and butt, then hunch over to imitate an old person. These guys really get into it and draw big laughs from our group.

Here’s a short video clip of the singing and dancing:

Afterwards we are asked to perform a popular song or dance (or both) from our home country. They warned us about this at lunch so we have time to think of something. As the only American in our group, I’m ready to belt a Rodgers & Hammerstein medley to further perpetuate my fantasy that musical theater is a touchstone of American pop culture when they tell us they’re not serious and we don’t actually have to sing / dance.

(Little do they know they dodged a bullet… my version of “Some Enchanted Evening” is pretty rusty.)

Later that evening I curl up in my tent to polish off this bottle of red and plow through Douglas Preston’s The Codex, an adventure book I picked up at a hostel in Malawi. It’s about an older wealthy man who spent his life stealing Mayan treasure; when he finds out he’s about to die of cancer, he sets up an elaborate hunt for his three estranged sons to work together to find his treasure. Favorite phrases include: “it was too clever by half,” “he didn’t need a complication like Sally Colorado in his life,” and “you’re selling a pig in a poke.”

Light and shadows dance across my tent when I wake up the next morning.

Following breakfast we bid adieu to our kind hosts at the camp.

They guide us back to the drop-off spot where we met them two days earlier. We hang out for about 15 minutes before the truck arrives to bring us back to civilization.

Good-bye, Amos!

Since some of the polers have time off, they ride with us back to Maun. The remaining polers double up the mekoro canoes to take then all back to camp, including a replenished supply of freshwater that the truck driver drops off.

Tomorrow I’ll have a short video recapping our time in the Okavango Delta.

I visited Botswana on a 30-day Nairobi to Joburg tour with Nomad Tours. They discounted my tour in exchange for blogging and photography; opinions are my own.