Monthly Archives: June 2008

Since we had 4 hours free time in the Okavango Delta when we arrived, our tour leader suggested we play a game to help pass the time.  The name of the game is Survivor, although others may know it as Assassins or a variation thereof.  The rules of the game are this:  you receive on paper a name, a weapon, and a location.  Kill or be killed. You must kill the person on your paper with the weapon in hand at the specified location.  When you kill, you receive the name, weapon, and location of the person you killed.  You become a survivor if the name you receive is your own. 

When the tour leader said, “Start!”, everyone became paranoid that where they were standing was the location their killer needed them to be.  My first task was to “kill” Dave with a toothbrush next to the fallen tree near the fire pit.  I waited there patiently until he passed by.  I told him I had an idea that would help him try to kill his victim, who unfortunately knew where she was to be killed and with what weapon due to his first failed attempt. So I killed Dave, but now my next victim, Louise, knew that I had to kill her with a chair by the mokoros. 

Meanwhile, Jill was tasked to kill Hanna with a rain fly while she was sitting in a chair.  Hanna was by far the most paranoid of any in the group.  About 30 minutes after the game started, she finally sat down.  Easy kill.  Her next task was to kill Carsten in his tent with a shoe.  Her patience would rule the day here.

Our tour leader offered for us to try our hand at powering a mokoro.  This prompted Louise to run down to the mokoros.  I immediately ran down there with a chair hoping for the kill.  She jumped in one of the mokoros, and I told her she was dead.  She thought she could get off on a technicality.  After she argued that “in a mokoro” is different than “by the mokoros”, I lifted her out of the mokoro and she met death.  Unfortunately, she already tried killing Heather in the kitchen with some grass reeds, but failed.  She was allied with the tour leader, and she was trying to kill me, unbeknownst to me at the time. 

During lunch, Heather would not go to the kitchen, because she was afraid that I’d eliminate her.  So she had other people grab lunch for her.  She was complaining that she needed some more snacks, but wasn’t able to go get them because I was on constant alert.

Later that day, after much of the initial killings had been done, I was playing a game of 500.  The tour leader said to the packing team, which included me, that we were to empty the water containers but not by the river, but behind the tents because we didn’t want to contaminate the river.  In any event, as I was walking behind the tents Heather came running up behind me with an empty wash basin trying to kill me behind the tents.  Fortunately for me, my ally, Cameron, held her back, which allowed me to get in front of the tent in order to survive. 

Nearing the end of the afternoon, it was time for swimming at the water hole.  Heather started walking towards the swimming area, which she needed to cross the kitchen to get to.  I sprinted over and hurdled a couple chairs then began “strangulation with grass reeds”.  I became a survivor.

Everybody went to the swimming hole.  Carsten raced back to his tent to change so he could get in the water.  Jill followed.  Carsten was killed in his own tent with Jill’s shoe.  Jill became a survivor, he never would have gotten her in a mokoro with a live insect anway.  The End.

To get to the Okavango Delta, we took a mokoro (dugout wooden canoe) ride out to an uninhabited island.  It was basically like a Gondola right, but in the middle of Africa instead of Venice.  We arrived at our “embarking” station after a 2 hour bumpy ride and a “foot and mouth” check point.  As we arrived there were about 20 locals or so that started unloading the truck and grabbed our gear and put it in the mokoros.  The mokoro ride lasted about an hour and was as relaxing as can be, especially since we were woken 5:30 AM. 

As we landed on our island, the first thing we noticed was a buffalo skull in the firepit.  We immediately set up camp, and had about 4 hours to rest, eat, and play the game “Survivor”.  After that period, it was time for a game walk.  In theory this should have been awesome.  The Okavango Delta is one of the most densely populated areas of big game in Africa, if not the most.   During our one and a half hour game walk, guided by certified locals, we saw a pack of zebra (apparently the rest of the world pronounces it zeb-ruh, whereas Americans pronounce it zee-bruh, much like the letter z, zed versus zee).  Anyway, it was very disappointing, especially because this was the most expensive optional payment of our Safari trip.  At night, the locals performed sing and dance routines for us, which provided some entertainment.  As part of tradition, our group had to perform as well.  Needless to say, it was fun.

The next morning, we awoke very early for a morning game walk.  Again, we saw more zebra and not much else. Later that afternoon, after a mokoro ride back and a 2 hour bumpy ride and a “foot and mouth” checkpoint, 12 of us from our group went to the airport to fly over the Okavango Delta.  We sat in a 7 seater.  Before take-off, the pilot showed us on a map where we’d be flying, and it was so much further into the delta where we had been the previous night.  He said, “Where you were last night, really isn’t the delta, the delta doesn’t start until here”, as he pointed to a game reserve line about 20 kilometers north of where we had been.  The plane ride was pretty amazing.  We got to see herds of elephants and buffalo, a few giraffe, and just the vast size of the delta. Apparently, anything goes with aviation in Botswana, at one point in the flight, our altitude was at most 50 feet. We flew in tight formations with 2 other planes.  It was one of the highlights of the Safari trip. 

After a very lazy week in Mauritius, it was time to make our way to Cape Town for the start of our organized safari. In Cape Town, we went to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned during the apartheid years.  It was quite a sad experience listening to the guide, who was imprisoned there himself, tell the atrocities that occurred there not so long ago.  Adding to the apartheid excursions was the township tour.  It was quite humbling to go through these neighborhoods, most of which wouldn’t even be adequate for farm animals in the US.  In a “hostel”, which consisted of four small bedrooms, one bathroom and a kitchen, there could be up to 12 families living there.  Those at least were made of stone, while some others who didn’t like the cramped living quarters made their own hut of a mixture of scrap metal, wood, and cardboard with dirt floors.  It was a weird experience wandering around the area that is very much lived in, with all the little kids so starved for attention that they clung to you.  Other than the still obvious effects of apartheid, the city is quite nice- a beautiful maritime landscape topped off by Table Mountain.

It was time for our organized tour with Acacia to begin.  The first real stop was at the Fish River Canyon which is the second largest canyon in the world behind the Grand Canyon.  It was a big hole in the ground, similar to the Arizona version, but significantly smaller (160km vs. 446km long, 27km vs. 29km wide, and 550m vs. 1.6km deep), and with less majestic colors (in my humble American opinion). 

Namib-Naukluft Park, the red sand dunes of Namibia, was awe-inspiring.  We climbed Dune 45 at sunrise, which overlooked all the iron-rich dunes in the area.  Absolutely amazing scenery. 

Swakopmund is a very German town that Brad and Angelina made famous.  It is known as the extreme sports capital of Africa.  We went sandboarding, which is like snowboarding but on sand, which hurts much less falling than on snow and ice.  We also rode down the dune on a piece of polished wood on our stomachs, much like sledding.  I somehow managed to get the least air resistance of anyone doing it that day and had the fastest clocked speed at 75km per hour sliding down the dune, before crashing headfirst into a sandbank (I am still finding sand everywhere).  We also went quad biking around the dunes, which allows much faster speeds than typical 4×4, it was ok, but nothing too spectacular except the views of the water. 

We made a brief stop at Cape Cross to see the quarter of a million seals residing in area.  They managed to create one of the foulest smells I have ever witnessed.  Despite the stench, it was a sight to see with so many seals either laying on the rocks or swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. 

Etosha National Park had a lot less density of animals than Kruger, so it was kind of a disappointment in that respect.  They did however have a watering hole at the campsite that was light with floodlights all night which allowed good viewing of rhinos coming to drink past dusk.  The coolest part was how close the animals came to the viewing stands though.  In the middle of the night I was woken by very loud lions roaring at the watering hole. I of course jumped out of bed in time to see them wandering/laying around.  I was hoping they were going to be hunting the zebra also at the watering hole, but they weren’t hungry I guess and just kept to themselves.