ALONG with the house, we also had the use of the company’s boat, a far more salubrious affair with a 45 horsepower engine which actually worked.
The following morning, nursing hangovers from Mike’s birthday party, we all piled aboard the craft, fishing rods at the ready.
Fishing in the Okavango is quite a different story from Transvaal fishing. Instead of using ground bait and sitting for hours, waiting for something to happen, you use a spinner, which has to be cast out and reeled in continuously.
It’s quite hard work and, when I’m involved in it, just as ineffectual. When one barbel had been caught and thrown back, one fishing rod had been broken, the last beer had been drunk and Wendy’s baby had had an accident in its last clean nappy, we decided to call it a day and head for home.
This was where the fun started.
By now we were downstream of a low bridge, where the water was fast-flowing but very shallow. We had got there by charging at it at full speed, tipping the outboard so that the propeller wouldn’t foul on the river bed and letting our momentum carry us under the bridge.
It had seemed pretty clever at the time, but none of us had thought about how we were going to get back.
Our first attempt was a repeat of the downstream method. It worked well up to a point but, unfortunately, that point was under the middle of the bridge. We got about three inches further the second time. By now a crowd was gathering, shouting encouragement from the river bank. At least, I think it was encouragement.
On the third go, we enlisted the aid of a boat hook, hoping that we could punt our way from the middle of the bridge to the safety of deep water. That was the theory. It didn’t work.
We thought about getting out and pushing the boat through, but one piece of intelligence did get through to us from the ever-increasing crowd of Batswana on the bank. One small boy knew one word of English. Crocodile.
We were in a bit of a pickle. We had no anchor with which to kedge ourselves through and the bridge arches were too narrow to permit the conventional use of oars. We did use them in the end, jamming them between the logs that were the fabric of the bridge and levering ourselves to the other side.
The spectators gave us a big cheer, in appreciation of our half-hour comedy show and we hied ourselves home for a Turkish-cum-mud bath and a late lunch.
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