Mokoro Safari: Five things you should know
If you’ve been doing some research for a Botswana safari, then there’s one phrase that keeps coming up in your reading: a mokoro safari.
There it is in the Okavango Delta, but it also crops up in the Linyanti and Moremi reserves. Okay, so you know it’s a kind of canoe, and you watch wildlife from it, but hang on: a canoe needs water, and … uhm … doesn’t that mean hippos and crocodiles? What’s a mokoro made from? And exactly who is paddling this thing?
Let’s answer those questions.
WHAT IS A MOKORO?
Modern mekoro may be man-made but they retain the character of the wooden original.
A mokoro (muh-KORO) is quite simply the traditional water transport of Botswana’s wetlands and waterways. Instantly recognisable as a canoe, mokoros (plural mekoro) were once carved from big riverside trees but have now been replaced by fibreglass replicas, ensuring both a sustainable industry and drier occupants. (The new ones leak a lot less, trust me.) Sitting low in the water, they have a shallow draft and appear unstable until your ‘poler’ steps in. Born and bred on Botswana’s waterways, these local guides stabilise and propel your mokoro with a long wooden pole, and it’s not long before you sit back and start to relax.
WHAT WILL I EXPERIENCE?
Quiet & unobtrusive, a mokoro can get you close to wildlife at the water’s edge.
A mokoro safari is your chance to absorb Africa on a different level. There is no sound of an engine, no background hum of people and machines – just the silver water, green land and blue sky of pure Nature. But it’s not exactly silent: you’ll listen to a serene symphony of bird calls, frogs and insects as you slip along, perhaps punctuated by the sudden splash of a sitatunga, an oddly semi-aquatic antelope. This is not, however, about the big animals (you’re in a canoe after all), it’s an activity designed to showcase Botswana’s wetlands, and its bewildering details are explained to you by your poler, who is also a professional guide. Mokoro tours are generally offered in the afternoon and can be combined with walking safaris.
WHERE CAN I DO IT?
Natural Born Polers – your guides grew up in the area & are masters of their craft.
Not everywhere. There’s not enough water in the Kalahari and too much in the https://www.safari-online.com/destinations/botswana/chobe-national-park/. But even within the classic mokoro destinations of the Okavango Delta, Linyanti and the Moremi Game Reserve, your mokoro activity is dictated by location and season.
Generally speaking, you need to be at a water-based camp rather than a land-based camp. A water camp will be located by permanent water and should be able to offer year-round mokoro safaris (indeed, several deep-delta camps offer only mokoro safaris). A land camp may be able to deliver mokoro safaris but only during Botswana’s annual flood (see here How the Okavango Delta works) and that is for a few months only (generally between June and September). But it happily coincides with the mildest and driest time to visit Botswana!
WHAT’S MY ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT?
There’s not a more natural way to move through Botswana’s wetlands than by a mokoro.
About as little as you can think of: there’s no engine and no pollution, and there’s no man-made noise other than the soft snick of camera shutters and occasional word between the polers. Your only mark on the landscape is the wake of your slow-moving mokoro, and indeed your mokoro safari preserves the landscape you marvelling at. You’ll glide past giant trees – the jackalberry, the sausage tree – which were once chopped down for wooden mekoro before they were replaced by replicas. Your poler, usually male but increasingly female, will be from the local community and are specialists in water-work.
IS IT SAFE? WHAT ABOUT KIDS?
A mokoro safari takes place in safe, shallow areas; at some lodges, your kids can learn to pole!
Good question; there are hippos and crocodiles in Botswana’s wetlands but the chance of encountering either while you are on a mokoro is reduced to almost zero – here’s why.
While in a mekoro, your guides and polers have as much interest in meeting a hippo as you do. It’s the last thing they want, and since hippos are territorial and prefer deeper water, your guides stick to shallow water away from the hippos. And it really is shallow – too shallow for big crocodiles – and under the expert guidance of your poler, you’ll never drift into a deep water lagoon or big river.
As for taking children on a mokoro safari, nearly all lodges require them to be twelve or over unless you are at a family-specialist camp where young children can have a mokoro experience (including learning how to pole!) with a dedicated guide in the shallow water in front of camp.
