Our next destination was the Sepupa Swamp Stop, where we could presumably find independent mokoro guides to take us into the delta and save $70 over the rates in Maun. However, after following a few signs back through a series of deep sand roads, a man wearing a Swamp Stop polo informed us that the route to the business was in fact flooded, and he offered no alternative for reaching the polers' collective. We returned to town and ordered a goat dish at a restaurant there. As we waited for our meal to arrive, we caught glimpses through the half open back door of a man hacking away at the carcass of a goat that was hanging from a tree. Now that's fresh!
We continued on to Maun. This stretch of road was notable for the sheer volume of domestic animals that wandered out into the road in front of us. Since motorbikes are so uncommon in Botswana, many of these creatures didn't know what to make of us and would assume a visage of wild-eyed terror before sprinting in a random direction (actually that direction was invariably the one in which I had planned to swerve to avoid said animal).
Our bikes were struggling as we pulled into Maun, making all kinds of interesting noises and possibly jerking with some regularity (it might have just been the very uneven in-town roads). We got a tent site on the river at Old Bridge Backpackers for 50P. We had intended to run around and check out the outfitter competition but fatigue got the better of us and we shelled out 850P to Old Bridge for a two-day mokoro trip leaving the next morning. I picked up some fresh veggies and made a flavorless pasta dish (no one had left tasty spices on the communal shelf), while the other guests excitedly watched and bet on an English horse race. I turned in early and was lulled to sleep by the sounds of an animal that sounded very much like a squeaky toy.
A powerboat picked us up at 8am and sped an hour upriver to the buffalo fence where the mokoro village was located. The plant and birdlife on the river was remarkably similar to what one might see on the Ocklawaha or a similar Florida spring-fed stream. At the collective, dozens of fiberglass-coated dugout canoes sat at the ready, and around fifty polers stood expectantly, waiting for the administrator to give them an assignment and income for the day. We would soon learn that if we had only found the correct roads to get to this point, we could have paid the drivers directly and only been charged $150 total rather than the $130 each that we had paid to the hotel.
Once we were assigned our poler, he took us back to the village to get his things in order, then he had us board his boat and we set off through the high reeds. As someone who regularly paddles on Florida rivers, sitting in a mokoro was horrendously boring. Not only did we have princess seats where we could contribute nothing to the propulsion of the boat, the reeds were so high that we were completely oblivious of our surroundings. I requested to drive, since this would give me something to do and a much loftier perspective, but the guide (wisely) declined my request. Fortunately, it was only an hour before we got to our island campsite, and here the real excitement began - we would spend the next six hours sitting around and waiting for dusk.
Using only a handful of sticks, some matches and a brick of firestarter, our guide had a fire going in no time. He prepared tea and coffee and we sat for a time in the shade sipping our drinks. He showed us a nearby swimming hole that he promised was hippo free. He also showed us the toilet which was an impressively deep, narrow hole in the ground. These were our diversions for the day. From other guides that came wandering through our camp, I learned that the island was actually miles across and was home to lions, elephants and giraffes; there were also many other primitive tourist camps roughly identical to our own. Without telling anyone, I slipped away and wandered along an extensive, but poorly defined network of trails, and managed to get lost for a few hours without seeing much in the way of animals or people. I gave some thought to what I would do should I come face to face with a hungry lion whilst rambling through the tall grasses; to this end, I picked up a stick and whittled a sharp point on the end using a baby coconut.
I eventually found my way back to camp, filled up on water, and set off in a different direction. Before too long, I wandered into another camp and the guide there escorted me back to my own. I tried yet another direction, but soon met with another guide who led me back in the same manner, my head held low as he explained my transgression to our guide. I attempted to drive an empty mokoro and found it to be remarkably difficult; I can't imagine that even a mokoro expert would deny that a canoe or kayak is vastly superior. A few hours before dark, we set off on a game walk. Our guide led us to within a few hundred feet of a large herd of elephants, keeping us close to the trees to avoid being trampled. Something spooked them and they stampeded away, leaving a trail of steaming excrement, massive footprints, and broken branches. As dusk approached, our guide insisted that we stop hiking to avoid the lions' peak hunting time; I suggested that the four of us could probably handle a lion or two, but he disagreed. Back at camp, we prepared pasta over the fire and the guides made sadza and beef by rehydrating biltong.
We were up with the sun and we made an early morning paddle to a neighboring island for a three-hour game walk. We soon saw large herds of giraffes, zebras, warthogs, baboons, and wildebeests, apparently unperturbed by us and the many other groups of tourists doing the same thing. On the ride back, we stopped by the hippo pool to watch the lazy beasts bob up and down, grunting and spraying jets of water into the air. Shortly after we got back to camp, a powerboat pulled into the swimming area. The girl who accompanied Matt and I had to catch a flight and had requested an early pickup. We had the choice of going with her or sitting around and doing nothing for the next six hours then going back by mokoro. This was not that difficult a choice. The ride back, charging through the narrow reed tunnels with twin engines, carving a six-foot-wide path of destruction, was way more enjoyable, and we made it back to the mokoro camp in record time. Once past the buffalo fence, the driver handed us each a beer and we sat back and sipped as we cruised back to the hostel. En route, we watched as a teenage boy, standing on the railing of a jon boat, used a big stick to pole over to a group of girls that had somehow become trapped on a small island in the middle of the river; I perceived this to be just about the greatest photo opp of all time, but my camera had recently died, and neither Matt nor our new friend from Hong Kong made any effort to capture it.
We told the hostel employees that we were having some trouble with our bikes and they called up a guy named Craig who regularly came to the hostel bar to drink. He promised to head over there as soon as he got a chance. Five hours later, he arrived and took my bike for a spin around the block. He diagnosed the sound as being a top-end problem and concluded that there was really nothing I could do - the bike would probably break down in a few hundred kilometers, we wouldn't be able to get any parts outside of Cape Town, and repairing it, either preemptively or afterward, would cost more than the bike was worth. Our neighbor, who was a car mechanic, disagreed with this diagnosis and insisted that the bikes still had a hundred thousand kilometers in them. Either way, our best (and really, only) option seemed to be to keep driving until the bikes stopped running, and then figure something else out.
We got a late start and rode a long boring stretch of highway to Gweta. The hostel staff had told us there would be petrol there, but asking around, we soon found that the tanks were damaged and there hadn't been a refueling in a month. We talked for a time with a guy in a landrover named Brad; he recommended we try to make it that night to Elephant Sands Rest Camp which was just a little past Nata. He offered to give us a liter of gas from his tank, since we were likely to stop just short of our destination, and we found various pieces of tubing and pipes to try to siphon it out, but after several attempts, and several mouthfuls of fumes, we concluded we didn't have the right tools. Matt and I next went down the road to Planet Baobab, a fancy hotel that we imagined might have gas to spare; it turned out that they did infrequently ship gas from Nata, but apparently did not operate with sufficient margins to sell us a liter.
We made it to Nata with 15km to spare and filled our tanks and our jerry cans full. We asked the attendant about our target campsite and learned that it was 105km out. The book had warned of a badly potholed road heading north, but we found a brand new, extra-wide highway. Signs every fifty feet informed us that the speed limit was in fact 30kph, but since everyone else on the road was going 120, we reasoned that we could probably get away with doing 80. As dusk neared, we spotted a large elephant on the side of the road. This was pretty exciting at the time, but as we continued, long lines of elephants came crashing out of the trees on one side of the road and crossed to those on the other. As a giant bull crossed, I pulled to a stop some 200ft from it to take pictures; Matt stopped at a similar distance past the creature. The elephant suddenly flipped its head up and bucked towards me, as if it were contemplating a charge. This put me on edge, and I tried to quickly put my bike into gear, but missed the pedal - even if I had gotten the bike moving, I would've either had to rapidly turn around or swerve through the beast's legs; if this animal charged, I was a dead man - fortunately, he did not.
120km out of Nata, we asked a construction worker about the campsite and he said it was another 20km up. 60km later, we found ourselves riding on a badly potholed road with pitifully weak headlights in the dead of night. We stopped at a construction camp and begged the workers for a place to stay, but they told us to continue on for another 20km to reach Panda Rest Camp. We arrived there at 8:30PM, having ridden over 500km since we left Maun at noon.
