Storms! Rains! 110 km an hr. we rush through Africa roads and hydro plane across the roads with our trailer behind. I took a quick picture of the lands covered in water. Lightning storms, crackling of crazy thunder and this drive has turned into a race against time. I turned to Shelley at one point and said- do you think he's driving so fast because he's worried about flash flooding? She said that the terrain is very much like Texas and it was certainly a possibility.
The rains soon pulled back and a bit of sun poked through the clouds. We turned down a path and blessed told us 15km till our next location. We passed by children who always seem to turn and run over to wave at us. Their play areas are always heavily built up blocked in thorn bushes about a couple of meters high to keep the animals from getting them. After 4x4ing through sandy paths and small ponds we finally made it to our lodge on the Khwai river.
This is a family owned establishment and obviously a popular fishing lodge. Both parents and their late teenage boys were helping with running the place. After a quick lunch prepared by Blessed, he warned us about walking at night because this place has a lot of snakes. Not a good thing for eric to hear. Unfortunately the news put him immediately on guard and is stressed about having to walk the pathways. Mom and son help Shelley, John, Eric and I with our bags and we walked to our sleeping quarters for the night. Small one room hut with an en-suite overlooking the delta. We also received our safety warning that there is a resident hippo that likes to make use of the paths at around midnight and so if its late we'll receive an escort to our room. He's apparently pretty tame but does like to make his way around the property and he's wild so therefore still unpredictable. Oh Africa, got to love it.
It's thundering and lightning out so we just hang in the main lodge area on their comfy couch/daybed overlooking the large patio deck and what looked like a lake. Off in the distance it's as though there are hedges perfectly pruned to be same height. We learned later that it is huge masses of floating vegetation even many of the trees in the distances lay their roots below the water's surface. Blessed made us dinner and we had an early night.
The next morning we had our scheduled pontoon boat ride(correct with proper word for that type of boat, makoro I think). A quick breakfast and coffee and we all head down towards the boat area to hop in the commuter boat that takes us to our main destination. We drive directly towards the floating vegetation. Just before entering a waterway leading into the floating veg, we pulled over to check out a crocodile sun bathing on a muddy bank. He seemed aware but unaffected by our presence. Off we went and entered the labyrinth of waterways turning here and there, stopped for a second to gaze at the ears of a hippo and then turned to a muddy bank in the centre of all the floating veg. It was hard ground and treed. We grabbed our life jackets and daypacks and hiked through the wooded area for 5 minutes and turned to a shallow water's edge. Looked quite like an edge of our local Coquitlam river. There, lined up were our pontoon boats. At first glance they appeared like large hollowed out trees, but on closer inspection we discovered they were fibreglass replicas of the traditional boats. The real ones only last 7 years and take an entire tree to make.
First steps into the boat we quickly realize that these are very tippy boats. Once both Eric and I were in and the guide (standing in the very back of the boat with a long stick probably 4 or 5 meters in length) we pushed off. Oh boy, these felt so sensitive to movement that at any second we could be flipped over and knee deep in water. Imagine a guy on a highwire, or if you've ever tried to balance on a kickboard in a pool, that's how tippy. If you lifted your arm, it disturbed the boat, if you stretched your leg, it caused the other person to question why you were moving. So we sat as still as we could but constantly adjusting ever so gently and softly to compensate for what felt like an imminent plunge into the water filled with who knows what. Flashbacks of national geographic shows shoot through our minds of weird parasites, crocodiles, snakes, fish with massive teeth. Why are we doing this? And our guide pushes with his large pole into the water and we make our way into thick,heavy vegetation. Are we seriously going in there? It was less than 30 seconds and the grasses and brush was about 2meters high on either side of you. You had to push and pull the reeds off your face and out of the boat. The guide tells you that you might have a frog or spider come in but don't worry they don't bite.GREAT! The best way to describe the terrain is imagine going into a wheat field and crawling on the ground like a baby who hasn't yet learned to walk. Now remember, Blessed told us that this place had a lot of snakes. Welcome to Eric's living hell! An hour and a half it seemed of going through thick grasses to openings filled with Lillypads and pond flowers and prospects of running into hippos and crocs and back to more thick grasses, all the while you are hearing critters scurrying off the edges but never revealing themselves and the most unstable boat ever. There is no exit plan here. The waterways, for the most part, only had sufficient room for one boat at a time. I hear Eric in front breathing deeply, doing his best to try to avoid completely panicking and freaking out!!!
We endured it for what seemed 3 hours but likely was only an hour and we landed on another land mass surrounded by these grasses. We jumped out for a quick walk and had a guide tell us about some local vegetation. It was blazing hot out. I'm not sure we listened much as we were just trying to get over that whole ordeal in the boats. We had a quick picnic lunch, waited a while ( I think our guides had to kill some time as the tour was likely supposed to be a certain amount of time), and once again we had to get into those boats. Every corner we hoped we were close to being done- nope. It just went on and on. I heard Eric say he couldn't do this anymore but there isn't really anything anyone could do. I did my best to console him but nothing could really do the trick. Anyways, we obviously made it and we didn't fall in and have any snakes, hippos, crocs or large tooth fish eat us, so we can share our story and encourage anyone who even was considering trying one of these things to skip it and try something else.
Having survived our latest adventure, it was immediately off to the bar and ordered a double strong drink. We quickly realized that we also got very burnt by the hot African sun. Crazy farmer tan for me and a close to blistering neck for Eric on his vitiligo. The rest of the night we spent with Heidi in the main lodge area who we later learned was part of the family and a silent owner. Lots of wine and sharing of stories and we retired for night.
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