We drive for 12 hours, I get a necklace made of waterlillies, and we run over a hippo in a boat

Driving for 12 hours is not that fun. It entails waking up before the sun is up, quickly packing away anything you took out the night before, eating a diet of crackers and cookies for the entire day, and constantly wondering just where in Botswana we are. Driving from Gaborone to Maun was pretty uneventful, but arriving was exciting! Maun is situated right on the banks of the Okavango Delta, which is essentially a huge swamp with water canals, marshes, and wildlife. We spent our next day basking in the sun while enjoying the sights of the Delta, one of the trip highlights. We woke up early (reoccurring theme of the trip), and were driven by a speedboat to an area where the mokoros (dug out wooden canoes) were. One guide and two of us to a mokoro, we sat back and enjoyed our six hour tour of the Delta and its sights. Surrounded by waterlillies, in perfectly still water that reflected the clouds, I was in bliss. This was by far one of the most relaxing and beautiful ways I have spent a day. I sat with Nira, and our guide Dayz, was quite insightful about the Delta. He even picked us waterlillies from the Delta and made us necklaces to wear! Favorite comments include: Me: “So, do the hippos ever attack the canoes?” Dayz: “Yes, but only sometimes” Me: “But do hippos eat humans?” Dayz: “They eat everything.” Amusing. But here I am today, meaning no wild hippo attacks. We did see quite a few hippos but they generally just peered at us through the water. Well, except for the time when we were heading back from the mokoros, after being picked up by a guide from our hostel, who found it amusing to speed over a hippo we had just seen go underwater. Me: “How fast do the hippos swim?” Guide: “Faster than this boat.” Pretty scary, but I trust that the guides know what they are doing, although that hippo did look pretty angry. It was a pretty funny conversation between Nira and I when we compared how this situation would be different if it were in the United States. We concluded that the hippos would be in secured areas, we would be wearing life jackets, no waterlilly necklaces would be possible because signs would be posted about not disturbing the wildlife, and we would absolutely have to sign a 5 page wavier about the dangers of the Delta. Not in Africa!