手つかずの自然の迫力を満喫、大湿原の旅

As I flew above Botswana's Okavango Delta in a four-seater airplane, I could see water everywhere.

"A nice place for ducks," I thought.

The flat expanse of flooded land below was a world of olive-colored islets, pea-green water channels and sky-blue expanses of shallow lakes and ponds. Animal trails, cut by the millions of antelope, elephants and other African beasts that call this wetland in this southern African nation their home, snaked through the scenery, cutting it up into an emerald mosaic.

It looked like a city map - only greener. I scanned though the window and saw vast herds of creatures, too far below to discern what they were, but for a family of great gray elephants that plowed through the shallows like a small fleet of boats.

Wow! What an incredible place: a 15,000-plus square kilometer wilderness of untouched floodplains where animals rule and roads don't exist.

The Okavango River, the mother to all of this flooding, begins life in the Angolan highlands, but unlike nearly every other waterway on Earth, it doesn't eventually empty out into the sea. Instead, every year it dumps an average of 11 cubic kilometers of water into an inland estuary...water that is sucked into the thirsty dry Kalahari sands or else evaporates beneath an African sun.

An hour later, after flying over endless vistas of grassy swamps, my pilot began our descent toward Chief's Island, a relatively drier part of the region where animals gather in larger concentrations than anywhere else in the delta. It's a great place for a "Big 5" African safari - lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and cape buffalo - and I began to see multitudes of wild game even before we touched down. Milling around on the airstrip were herds of zebras, giraffes, impalas and warthogs; a menagerie of animals who only deigned to move aside for our landing, once we had made two low and noisy passes right above their heads.

"Good morning, Sir," said my guide, as I exited the little plane. "Welcome to the Okavango - the largest inland delta anywhere on Earth."

The air was alive with the smell of tropical humidity. Water was all around, and indeed, it was a nice place for ducks. They were everywhere: waddling up the runway, floating in the puddles and eyeing the airplane with quizzical looks.

The plane took off again then, leaving me behind and causing an elephant at the end of the runway to flap its ears and trumpet defiantly. Somewhere nearby a lion began to roar. The ducks around us quacked.

"Are you ready for a game drive?" asked my guide politely, and so I boarded a big open-sided safari vehicle that had been waiting for me, sipped my gin and tonic, and sat back and enjoyed Africa at its best.

超技巧運転で湿原を疾走

The game-viewing byways in the Okavango are not the sort of trails one should attempt without a sturdy vehicle and an expert driver. In fact, most of them were so flooded that they were more like rivers than roads. At every bend and corner, great flocks of egrets, kingfishers and fishing eagles waited in anticipation of the bow wave that drove fish in front of our wheels and up onto the bank.

Crocodiles slipped away at our approach, frogs leapt, and a catfish the size of my arm swam in through one side of the vehicle and out through the other. My expert and talented guide, much to my amazement, managed to keep our vehicle from sinking, while simultaneously searching for wildlife.

We saw elephants and antelope and leopards and rhino, and on a rare patch of dry land we found three lions, licking their lips after eating a meal. Vultures swarmed over the leftover remains, bickering like dogs over the scraps of a bone.

Back at the tented lodge, the equal of British colonial five-star accommodations, I was treated to sumptuous food and regaled by my guide with exciting tales from the bush.

"Just the other week," he said, "four lions had a big fight just next to the restaurant here. It was really quite exciting, although we did have to ask the guests not to leave their tents until the lions had gone."

Apparently such things happen all the time. Elephants drink from the swimming pool, hyenas will try to steal ice cream from the dinner table and baboons will play on the patio of your lodging site.

Such experiences are rare elsewhere in Africa - but the Okavango is a special place. There is no mass tourism, and there are no fences separating you from the wildlife. It's a pure and untouched destination where few people travel, but those who do, come away with an experience like no other on Earth.

The Okavango is a nice place for ducks, that's true ... but it's also a nice place for humans as well.