Okavango Journal Day 7

Mornings on expedition start around 5:45am, when the first person (almost always research manager Götz Neef) wakes up to resuscitate last night’s fire. A percolator gets first shift over the coals, followed by a giant tea kettle. The early shift (by then usually 3 or 4) gets to watch the sun rise, grand and red on the wide Delta horizon. Slowly the rest of the camp rises, and conversation ebbs and flows; recaps of the previous day, plans for research activities, exchanges in English and Portuguese and Yei and Swana.

The most common conversation in the morning is about nighttime noises. Who was kept awake by what, for how long.

Here’s expedition manager Kyle Gordon:

“I had found myself an enclosed campsite in amongst some fan palms which I could tuck my single man mountain hardware tent. After a stunning evening around the fire with the team, serenaded by the elephants and hippo, I retired to my alcove. As per usual out here, 5 minutes after becoming horizontal I was out for the count. It was around 2am that I heard, or felt, the bass thudding of hooves pounding up the path toward my tent, the keyword being ‘path’ which i realised my niche was located directly on. I had time to turn my head and look out the gauze door of my tent in time to see four legs before immediately tucking into the fetal position and bracing for the worst. Luckily, what I later found out to be a buffalo, turned off at the last minute and crashed into the bushes and into the marsh next door. Safe to say, falling asleep this time took a while longer! A serious dose of adrenaline.”

Last night, in rough chronological order, I heard a hyena snuffling around the edges of my tent, a pride of lions roaring in the distance, a hippo grunting and roaring, then an hour or two of relative silence before the bird song at dawn.

Much of what I’d learned about the Okavango before I came out here was from images; photographs and videos of elephants roaming across wide flood plains, baboons wading through water. But now having been here for two crossings, I think of this place primarily through its sounds.

For the next 11 days we’ll post a sound recording of the Delta evening, in the form of a Sound Walk. Using binaural microphones, one of the team members will guide you through our camp, and bring you into this amazing soundscape.

The first one is uploading as we speak — watch our Twitter feed for the link!

#Okavango16 is a National Geographic expedition into the heart of Botswana’s Okavango Delta. For 17 days we’ll be surveying biodiversity, and sharing our experiences on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and our website, IntoTheOkavango.org.