Okavango Safari

It's the food chain, after all, that we've come to see: I sit on a veranda nibbling pate, watching a crocodile slide through the waters of the lagoon toward its diriner. It crashes into its prey with a splash and eats it as I sip my vodka. Dinner conversation often revolves around what ate what that day. This strikes me as slightly creepy. It's partially just prudery—where I live, raccoons and rabbits don't die of old age; they die in the jaws of their predators. But I rarely see it happen. I see the skeletal evidence later. The bottom line is I find skeletal evidence interesting; bloody-muzzled lions terrify me. The explicit mix of beauty and death here is unnerving.

It goes further than this, too: Colonialism is dying hard. While Botswana generally felt less racially tense than the US, I heard some stupefying comments from Africans. One white South African woman explained to me at length that it was simply not possible for her to be attracted to a black man—within full earshot of a black woman.

Sexism wasn't far away, either. In the bars of Maun, I heard men say things to women that would have earned them a swift right punch, even in the Wild West of the US.

There is pure peace, too. One afternoon I went with a guide in a canoe over clear water, watching fish and sand glide beneath us. There was a rumble of thunder in the distance, over the papyrus and clumps of palm. A shaft of yellow light broke through the piled-up clouds and hit the plain. A bird made a noise like a gate swinging on a rusty hinge-a single note fading out. Another sang a warning"uh-oh."

As we passed, saddle-billed storks and cormorants took off with a whoosh of huge wings, while a tiny whiskered tern with a white breast held its ground on a sandy island, fixing us with its tiny, fierce bead of an eye.

Water was moving everywhere. It rained on one horizon while it dried on another. Nearly all of the water in the delta is lost to evaporation and transpiration. We stopped, checked for crocodiles, and took a quick swim. Drying off on the grassy bluff, I watched a tiny, bright blue malachite kingfisher swaying on a reed.

The summer rains were, for the most part, just a threat when I arrived in November. As I flew above the delta between camps, the vegetation looked solid. Then I noticed there was a cumulus cloud reflected in it—I was looking at a marsh full of lily pads. Even then, before the flood, there was water everywhere.

Everyone loves a waterhole. Hippos wallow. Crocs lurk. Cormorants sit in the water berry trees when they're not diving for fish, holding out their wings to dry. A group of elephant bulls stand on the bank at dusk in brotherly companionship, entwining trunks and making room for each other at the water with what struck me as simple courtesy.

But no one, anywhere, loves water more than an elephant just past its second birthday after a long day on the trail with six other babies, three adult elephants, and an assortment of human company, mostly French journalists who are fabulously clad in blue crepe scarves, knee socks, and severe sunburns. The person who brought all this together is a mustachioed, cigar-smoking Oregonian named Randall Moore.

I'm part of this strange ad hoc family. Along with a Frenchman and an elephant guide from Botswana, I am sitting on top of Bennie, the largest, shyest, and most gentle of the three adult elephants. The trio are refugees from parks and zoos in North America. The seven babies are orphans from culling operations in Kruger National Park across the border in South Africa. There, elephant populations are controlled by rifle teams, but babies who are small enough to be moved and young enough to adapt to a new home are spared.