One of the most amazing things I have done while travelling through Southern Africa was an overnight trip in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Picture this: You’re sitting by a crackling bonfire on an island in the Delta, surrounded only by nature, thousands of stars sparkling above you, and you listen to hippos grunting just a few metres away in the water. Sounds good, right? The prices for such safaris can be very steep, but through conversations with fellow travellers I found a much cheaper way of visiting the Delta. Let me tell you about it.
First, you’ll need to get to Maun. This is fairly easy by public transport with connections from Kasane, Nata and Francistown going to Maun. You can read more about public transport in Botswana here. The minibus will likely drop you in town. You’ll then have to jump into a taxi or walk to get to the Mokoro Community Trust. It’s fairly close to the Old Bridge Backpackers, which is a nice hostel I have been told. Personally, I stayed with a Couchsurfing host in Maun. The Old Bridge Backpackers also organise mokoro tours in the Delta. These are more expensive because they are taking a Commission, but less of a hassle than how I did it. I would advise you to arrive rather early in the day at the Mokoro Community Trust to book your tour for the next day(s).
The Mokoro Community Trust organises the “polers” for mokoro tours. Quick note on the terminology at this point: a mokoro is a dug-out canoe made out of fiberglass that fits two people + one poler, a poler is a boat captain and guide. They use long sticks to steer the boat in the shallow waterways of the Delta. The Trust have a kind of rotating list, so the polers from the community all get to work in a fair way. At the Trust you need to pay concession fee, a fee for camping, etc. It’s all cash in pula. You’ll have to pay your poler separately after the tour, also in cash in pula. All prices are set. Me and my fellow traveller paid 630 pula (~45€) at the Trust’s office, 1400 pula (~100€) to the guide (including a tip and a small rental fee for the seats in the boat) and 1450 pula (~104€) for the rides to and from the mokoro entry/exit point to the Delta. So in total we paid around 125€ each for a two day trip into the Delta. This is way cheaper than if you were to book through an agency or a hostel. We did bring our own tent, water (bring plenty!) and food. So this was really the most budget-friendly option possible.
The ride from Maun to the entry/exit point is not organised by the Trust. You’ll have to organise it yourself. I had gotten the phone number of a guy with a four-wheel truck from a fellow traveller. That guy couldn’t but recommended a friend with whom I negotiated the price to drive us into the Delta and then back to Maun the following day. In the spirit of getting the cheapest price, we also asked around some more for people with four-wheel drive vehicles who wanted to earn a little money and got two more numbers very easily (taxi drivers can be good contact points). Here are two of the phone numbers I had gotten, you can give it a try: Active: +267 72 631 217 and Agnes: +267 72 629 354. We even asked the lady at the trust who asked us to step out of the building with her to haggle with her. So it’s really rather easy to find someone willing to take you, but they will probably ask for a lot of money initially, so be sure to negotiate well. If you’re only doing a day trip, it should be a lot cheaper because the driver can just wait for you there. Just be sure they actually have a four-wheel drive vehicle and that they know where to go. You can ask the lady at the Mokoro Trust to explain the route to them if you’re unsure. The road into the Delta is not an easy one. There are several entry/exit points and it depends on the season which one is used to start the boat tour. I did the tour in April 2023. They told us that later in the year you can actually go by boat from Maun into the Delta when it is flooded.
The programme of a mokoro overnight trip looks like this:
1st day: In the morning you get driven to the mokoro entry/exit point by car. There you’ll meet your poler and board your mokoro. Your poler will then steer you through the beautiful waterways (you’ll spot plenty of hippos and possibly elephants) to an island where you’ll set up camp. There is a break in the hot hours of the day during which you can go for a swim in the clear water of the Delta. In the afternoon, you can then go on a walking safari of a couple of hours. We saw quite a lot of animals and it was amazing to just be walking by them. You’ll get back to the camp at sunset, have dinner at the campfire and then go to sleep in your tent. We could hear hippos, elephants came quite near to our camp, and in the early morning we even heard lions roar.
2nd day: You’ll go on an early morning walk with your guide on the second day. We asked him to do a big tour, so we walked around the delta for about four hours and saw giraffes, red lechwes, zebras, impalas, crocodiles, hippos, plenty of birds and herds of wildebeest. The early morning and evening are the best times to spot animals. That’s why a two day tour is best to see them all. On a one day tour you go for a walk right after lunch, which is a terrible time to spot animals. After our walk, we then had lunch, packed up our stuff and were steered back to the entry/exit point from where our driver collected us in the late afternoon.
Here is what I would advise you to bring on this cheap safari: tent, sleeping bags, food (we took mostly cans that we heated by the fire), plenty of drinking water (around 15 litres for two days), tissues/toilet paper, soap, bathing suit, towel, mosquito repellent, sunscreen, a book (for the resting period around noon), enough cash to pay the poler and the driver.