OKAVANGO DELTA......The travels reminded me of the old movie "If This Is Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium". When taking a tour, you don't have to know where you are at each moment. In fact, you can just go wherever you're taken without much worrying about exactly where you are. That certainly was the case for travel to the Okavango Delta. About noon we pulled into an unmarked dock in the delta. Half an hour later we sorted through our supplies and loaded most of them onto the boat. We climbed into some kind of motorboat and sped off into the unknowns of the delta. And, we sped off too fast, because the driver didn't even slow down for the hippos and crocodiles we passed along the way.

I had no clue where our destination was or how long it would take. We traveled about an hour until we came to what looked like a resort of sorts. But, we soon learned that wasn't our destination. We were piled on to the back of a truck (that also doubled for public transportation) and headed off to a town, Saronga. Of course, we didn't know if this was our destination either. The papers we were given talked about a small village, do's and don'ts of photography, and don'ts of giving treats to the children. This wasn't our village.

The truck rumbled on to where the road eventually ended and the beginning of our poleing experience. It wasn't Venice, but we were off into the delta as fast as our polers could push us. It wasn't fast; it was far. The delta canals got smaller and smaller as we proceeded deeper into the bush. Grasses growing along both sides of the pathway brushed against us. After two hours of this, the boats came to shore with some other dugout canoes.

There were no children to give presents to. There were no adults to carefully photograph. There were no cold Cokes or hot showers. There was no town. We'd gone two hours into the wilderness and were completely surrounded by only wilderness. It wasn't what was expected, but there was nothing to be done except laugh about it and set up camp before the sun went down.