To the Gomoti Channel: On safari at Wilderness Qorokwe

One of the first things a Wilderness guide will ask you is your special interest. Lions; leopards; elephants; birds; trees? My answer is ‘The land’ as it affects everything else, which leads my guide, John, to announce every habitat change as we traverse the concession. ‘Mopane woodland’, ‘sandveld’, ‘floodplain’, ‘riverine forest’. As we drive from camp to the famed Gomoti Channel, one of the Okavango Delta’s principal arteries, the vignettes that roll by the vehicle turn slowly from sandy amber to green.

‘Classic savannah’, John announces as we emerge from the tree groves around Qorokwe camp. Wide-open earth dotted with acacia trees and mopane shrubs, bristling with yellow grass and tiny white wild jasmine flowers. We pass impala and zebra as we leave the trees in the dust. Tsessebe dart alongside the vehicle. Elephant silhouettes drift along the distant tree-line of lala palms, their hazy green foliage beckoning like a mirage in the desert. 

‘Mixed woodland’. The vegetation grows thicker with feverberries and the occasional rain tree. Kudu pelts are near indistinguishable from the tree bark, but are given away by their spiral horns and the white rings around their torsos. Small flocks of quelea appear like constellations. They move low and unpredictably to evade their predators, then settle in candlethorn acacias which buzz with the flutter of countless wings.

Lion spoor in the sand makes John slow the vehicle to a halt. We spot the remains of a male impala, just the ribs and horns, in the dirt. ‘He probably stole a leopard’s kill’, John hypothesises, knowing a female has been seen in these thickets. 

Sure enough, 30 minutes into the game-drive, she appears, hiding high in a knob thorn acacia that’s being strangled by python climbers. Her presence makes the baboons nervous, and they bark in warning to the others, while cisticolas in the nearby trees chirp their own alarms. 

‘Grassland’. We head further north through yellow plains. Three Verreaux’s eagle-owls look down on us from an African ebony tree as mongooses skirt around its base. An elephant snacks on an acacia. Giraffes with their tenants (oxpeckers that sit comfortably on their sloping necks) march slowly about. A mating pair of steenbok, tiny and regal, stop and stare as we pass by. 

‘Sandveld’, John says as the car rocks more than usual, negotiating the mini desert dunes beneath us. ‘These shepherd trees can only grow where there’s sand’. Hyena, apparently, enjoy the sand, too. We follow a bat-eared fox as it runs off into the distance, leading us to a group of three juvenile hyenas, and one adult, burrowed into a dried-up waterhole. 

The fox darts away, drawing my attention to the flecks of green that appear in the distance. At first, the vegetation is mere stubble on the desert’s skin. A feverberry tree here, a low mopane there. But soon the bursts of green become pockets, then thickets; increasingly complex tangles of grass, termite mounds, and shrubs, with lala palms swaying in the air like flags. 

John doesn’t need to announce the Gomoti Floodplains. They announce themselves. We emerge from the tangled thickets into open, green fields, the temperature markedly cooler as we near the water.

It shows itself slowly. At first more of an impression of water, as though traced delicately over wax paper. Cracks spread throughout the central islands and make fissures through mats of floating moss. Further inland, the cracks broaden into channels, thick with lily stems, no doubt, but glistening like empty black sky. When the channel is at its widest I hear the sound I love most on safari in the Delta; the blub and squelch of the vehicle as it swallows and spits out water that has inched its way across two countries to be here.

From the deeper waters, we hear pods of hippos grunt, their ears peeking out from the surface. White-faced whistling ducks glide beside the papyrus at the channel’s edges, and the siren song of the water beckons us out of the vehicle. 

What was a long drive, about two-and-half hours, in retrospect feels like just a blip. We hop out of the car and stand silently by the water. We sigh, and bask, and take turns saying how beautiful it all is. John lodges a palm fruit seed in the car’s coffee tray to keep it balanced, and I chuckle to myself at the unusualness of this day. 

We look through binoculars at a serval as it cuts through the grass ahead. Two lions, members of the Northern Pride, have found a cool termite mound to rest on, and are asleep next to their kill of the day – a male impala. 

I think about where we are, at the south-easternmost point of the Delta’s outstretched fingers. The waterway in front of us a mere tendril shooting off the Gomoti Channel. In my mind’s eye, I try to zoom out, picturing our place in the grand scheme of it all. When I zoom back in and open my eyes, John asks me, ‘Are you ready?’