After our amazing few days at Xakanaxa, we had returned to Maun and booked our scenic flight.
We took off around 4 in the afternoon in our tiny helicopter… with doors off, for better viewing! And was that an amazing 40 minutes flight! I am thoroughly fascinated and enamored by aerial photography! The natural design skills of Mother Earth takes the prize over any abstract painting in the art world!
The first section was still inhabited and we could see the oddly positioned kraals alternating with a saltpan here and there and roads crisscrossing the landscape. The lush and plump green growth lining the Delta waterways contrasted sharp with the dry and sandy plains and the burnt sections.
Leaving the human settlements behind, we passed over the cattle fence: a straight fence system running for kilometers to protect the wildlife of the Delta from veterinary diseases of the cattle in the human settlements. It seems however that this in turn causes other problems for the wild life as their “free-roaming” paths are blocked by the fence. This fence reminded us a bit of the Dingo Fence we saw when we took a trip to the Outback in Australia.
The further we flew over the Delta the more we saw the waterways of the Delta etching their spider webs in the landscape through dried fields and burnt trees and creating hundreds of little islands. From above it’s even more clear how the game creates the jig saw puzzle of bush trails in the grass lands and swamps.
We waved to some locals navigating the channels on their mokoro and saw a lonely baobab tree standing as sole survivor on a burned down patch of land.
We saw more elephants grazing in the green swamp and passed over some hippo’s enjoying a cool down in the river.
As said, an amazing 40 minutes! This was us ending our visit to the Delta on a high note… a very high note!
Seeing park fees in Botswana had put a serious spanner in our wheels, this was our last day in Maun as we would now head towards the South African border.
Okavango Delta scenic flight