Day 20 – Namibia/Botswana Safari 2015. R and R at Guma Lagoon in the Okavango Swamps

Today is Denise’s birthday. Happy Birthday my love.

We booked a mokoro boat trip for the day into the swamps and to one of the islands for a picnic lunch. It was necessary to first take a motor boat ride for 45 minutes to the mokoro pick up point and then off we go. Well you should have seen Denise’s face as we are pushed into the water, thought she was ready to bail. Took 15 minutes to settle down and then we just enjoyed been poled through the swamps. How these guys stand, balance and push you through is amazing. Was rather disappointing as to the lack of game and bird life the general reason given was migration and the abundance of water.  The guys took us to see a pod of hippos they were about 15 metres away from our mokoro, blowing and making hippo noises.

This area is not known for game but rather fishing of tiger, catfish and bream.

One of the channels we negotiated through the swamps

Denise in a mokoro

 It looks easy, but you get told not to do any counter balancing as the result could be a swim in the Okavango swamps, not so easy as it goes against ones instincts.

Wonderful riverine forest.

Mangrove swamps

We headed for one of the islands where we had lunch, there was lots of signs that Elephant and other game had swam over to the island, but it seems that this happens from September through to January when the water in the swamps recedes, but if it is fishing you are after then they tell us this is the place.

Food at Guma Lagoon was good and the room/chalet was rustic, but clean and right on the lagoon edge in fact part was on stilts in the water, at night we had a veritable orchestra of different frog calls, hippo grunts coupled with the tree branches scratching on our roof, thank goodness for ear plugs or we would not have slept.