So many birds…..

August 21, 2024

Today we got to “sleep in” a bit. Breakfast was at 7am. We had a big day of a boat ride out to an area where we would get in a makaro (canoe) and be taken through narrow channels in the delta. From there we will go to an island to walk around and have lunch, then a goat ride back to camp. 

We have a guide from the camp, Daniel, he is taking us everywhere today. 

We all load into the boat at 8am and are off for a delta water day. There are lots of birds out here and people get so excited to see them and know their name. I’ve taken it upon myself (with some encouragement by Maria) to rename the birds and to be the one to point when Daniel tells us where they are. My name’s are great for these birds: popsicle we, Gatorade neon bird, eagle, black bird, etc. 

After about an hour and a half we meet the  pole guides for the mokoru (essentially are canoes), currently made of fiberglass so they don’t cut down thge baobab trees anymore to make them, that site really low in the water and then the pole guides uses a like 10′ long pole to push off and guide us through the very shallow canals. 

We go for about an hour, in a circle around a large marsh and then are back at our boat. It was a very interesting experience. We got to see lily pads, water lillies and of course birds. 

We head over to an island where we will be getting lunch and doing a “foot safari.” The foot safari is a tiny little 15 minute hike before we get lunch. We can see that elephants have come through here but currently there are no animals on the island.

We all climb back into our boat and head off, to what Maria and I think is back to camp, but turns into an almost three hour ride around the Delta!! We stop for birds often. 

After about an hour, I get my Kindle out and start reading while we are cruising. It is SOOOO relaxing out here and so calm. I am still pointing out whenever Daniel says “bird at ten o’clock,” to ten o’clock, because I can’t fail at my pointing job now. 

After three hours we are finally back at camp, it’s about 3pm and we have free time until dinner. I grab more water and head to the lodge to play games with the Italians! They taught me all sorts of card games. My favorite game is Jungle Speed! It’s a game with cards that have all different shapes on them, many that look similar. If you and another person put the exact same card down the first one to grab the totum wins. It’s very intense and I’m very bad at it. I lost every round. 

We got kicked off our table around dinner time so we headed back to camp to hang out at our own table. I journaled until we had dinner. 

After dinner Brit and I ran to shower before the water got cold and then I came back to play jungle speed with the Italians and our guides. We got all three of them to play! It was loads of fun. James even won!

Tomorrow we head to Namibia. We will be there for the rest of the trip.