That's clearly NOT a runway

In the pre-jurassic, just before I went to work for Pterodactyl Airways as a cabin attendant, I unexpectedly found myself temporarily unemployed. My sister had a pilot friend who had been planning a trip to the Okavango swamps. Given the free time I had they very kindly invited me to join them. The pilot, Mike, also had a boat he kept at Delta camp. We would fly in, taking Mike's Beechcraft Baron ZS-DVN, and then take the boat up river, stopping whenever we felt like it.

Picture from Wikipedia. This is not ZS-DVN, but you can see the sleek lines. You know, just by looking at her that she's fast and elegant, it was love at first sight. My sister has a picture of me hugging her.

There was much planning; we had to take everything in with us except water. The water in the swamps could be drunk straight from the river, it had been completely filtered by all the reeds and there were no human settlements upstream of where went.
We met the night before to weigh and pack all our provisions and luggage. Mike weighed us too, ZS-Divine (as I'd christened her) would be right at the edge of her limitations and 'non-essentials' (more than 2 sets of clothes, for example) were arbitrarily excluded. One tube of toothpaste, one bottle of shampoo and so on (for the whole group). Obviously my excitement was clear because Mike put me up front, in the right hand seat, with my own set of headphones for the trip. I could barely sleep the night before, I was so excited.

We took off from Lanseria at sunrise, turned north and climbed out over the Magaliesburg. Not far after that the Kalahari begins, with the deepest white-sand and scrub edges quite clear from the air. We headed for Maun to refuel, get a bite from the Duck Inn and clear customs in Botswana. In those days the tower at Maun had NO WINDOWS facing the runway (minor planning error) so you had to double check after being cleared to take off.  "Delta Victor November, you go" was our clearance. Fortunately Mike had experienced Maun tower before and double-checked,  "Ah, negative tower, think I'll wait for the Caravan to land"

Maun airport, picture from Panoramio


Delta camp is about 15 minutes away from Maun by Beechcraft Baron - over one of the most beautiful parts of the world. The landscape beneath changes from the pale grey, scrubby Kalahari to lush, water-lilied abundance - it's quite breathtaking.

"There's Delta" said Mike, as we banked over the swamps "we're landing there". I looked around, absolutely nothing. Floating islands, channels, but no runway I could see. He lined up and I saw it, finally

FBXX runway 14. Note: Water at one end, huge palm trees at the other, precious little in between. Picture from Botswana Flying Safari 2010

Beechcraft Baron e55 landing distance required: 2,208 feet
Total length of runway 14 at FBXX : 3,900 feet (officially). Hah!
Lots of room, right?
Not so much, fully laden, 6 up in mid summer.

We came in high over the 60-foot palms, dropped beautifully onto the 'threshold' and stopped with at least 50 feet to spare. A hippo in the water in front of us snorted in alarm, ducked and disappeared.