Underwater Okavango begins
We are at Nxamaseri for our annual “Underwater Okavango” filming session. As we have been doing it for a few years now the logistics are getting easier and we are finding the setting up and settling in less daunting. We film in the panhandle of the Okavango Delta and have no diving facilities or infrastructure at all, so everything we need has to be brought in, down to the last spare O-ring.
Nxamaseri Lodge kindly allows us the use of a small wooden house that is some way from the camp. Here we can run generators, compressors, strew dive gear over every available surface and generally do what we like without upsetting the civilized paying guests.
The usually muddy brown water in the Okavango is clear in these channels for only 2 months of the year, June and July. During this window we dive to get a glimpse of the incredible world of waterlilies and wonder that colour these channels.
The team is the usual motley crew comprising Richard Boltar, Brad Bestelink and me (Andy Crawford). The three of us have been diving in this area for 10 years without incident, which we find quite miraculous.
We left Moremi on Friday, and arrived here on Saturday. Today was our first day at work but as we haven’t dived since this time last year and our gear has been stored in a lug box in a dusty room for the entire duration, we thought it prudent to do a tame dive to check that we, and all our gear, were functioning ok. Thankfully we were.
The visibility was terrible and the current was much stronger than it has been in previous years. This is probably because of the record water levels that Namibia and Botswana experienced this year. Floods displaced thousands of people and inundated thousands of square kilometres. At Nxamaseri the island on which the lodge is situated was completely underwater for the first time in very many years, and the usually dry and dusty interior of the island is green and grassy.
Jun 22, 2009 at 10:57 AM
Vanessa Stephen
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)