Suset on the Mokoro

Sunset on the Mokoro

 

A late afternoon excursion offered by the lodge packed a Land Rover full of us off to the Mokoro River, a quiet tributary that flowed into the Chobe.  Awaiting us when we arrived was a group of men—polers—who piled us into canoes and pushed off into the shallow waters.

 

First we see the hippos,” said my poler.  This is not a sentence we hear every day and was just part of the ongoing sense of wonder that waited just about every minute in both the Delta and Chobe National Park.  My poler pushes me off first, which is good.  I get a good view of just about everything.  

 

This is s not water you want to fall into.  Menacing crocodiles laze along the banks of the river.  A snake slithers on its surface. Lily pads display glorious white and purple lotus flowers.  At the round of a bend, in a large shallow pool, was another bloat of hippos.  Just another slice of wonder in days of surprise and awe.  Hippos!  We kept as safe distance.  Periodically they come up for air.  One left out a huge yawn, providing the perfect Instagram moment.

 

The poler is in no particular hurry.  We round another bend, pass a safari lodge on the river, and meander forward.  The poler alerts me to a lone elephant on the shoreline a few hundred meters ahead of us.  Fortunately, we were first in the line of canoes.  I stare is wonder.  I’ve seen lot sof elephants on this trip, but not by a river, at sunset, grazing by a river.  The guide pushes as close to the elephant as he dares.  I sit in wonder as this glorious creature, at the close of day, has chosen to come to the river to feed.

 

Magic. Eden.

 

I was evening when we returned and the glow of sunset sent shafts of orange light through the air.  As we return, the sun begins to set.  An almost reverse type of alpenglow occurs on the eastern side of the river.  The trees illuminate an orangey gold hue.  It looks like full peak autumn color in the Adirondacks. 

 

I should not be surprised.  It is fall in the Southern hemisphere, but at this latitude no leaves change color.  It was just one of nature’s glorious illusions.  This could have been a river in the Adirondacks, and this could be mid-October. But we were 8,000 miles away from there and six months off season.

 

By the time we return to the shore we are all giddy from excitement and exhaustion.  Dusk rapidly turns to dark.  Fortunately, it issn’t far to camp.  Dinner awaits, then bed.

 

I had been a day of peculiar splendor, when leaf and flower and bird and sunlit stone and shadow all seemed to proclaim the glory of God.