1 SPOT BIRDS FROM A BOAT
The Silver Serpent snakes up the Touw River from Ebb & Flow Rest Camp a few times a day, providing an effortless way to admire the local birdlife. A cigar-shaped slip of a craft with a canvas roof, the Serpent was built by Botswana’s Aliboats in Maun – which makes safari boats for the Okavango, Chobe and Zambezi.
Just eight guests at a time putter off on an eight-kilometre, 90-minute experience with skipper Mike Raubenheimer. No fitness required, just the ability to embark and disembark.
‘Every trip is different,’ says Mike. The forest upriver is a popular highlight, but so is encountering ‘thousands’ of cattle egrets and cormorants coming home to roost on reeds surrounding Island Lake at sunset. Others enjoy seeing Wilderness’s luxury homes from the river itself.
The boat has an engine but also an electric trolling motor ‘for quieter use where power boats are not allowed.’ Motors are switched off at times to allow nature’s silence to flood the ears. This is slow time; a chance to cover a lot more ground than the average person could in a canoe, with a lot less effort, and to hope for special sightings like turacos flashing red armpits as they fly overhead, a malachite kingfisher with a meal as close as a metre away, or puffadders swimming across the river. – JANINE STEPHEN
COST R150 per adult, R100 per child, conservation fee R41 pp.
DO IT The trip is offered by Wilderness River Safaris Eco Boat Cruises. Avid birders should note that Mike is not an official bird guide or avian expert. Take a jacket for the cool breezes, a snack and (if it’s that time) a sundowner. And don’t forget the binos. 082-440-9807, wildriversafaris.co.za