Wild Botswana

Our arrival in early June meant we needed a warm and comforting layer of clothes for the cold nights and crisp early morning game drives, but once the sun had climbed into the sky the days were without exception sunny, warm and cloudless, with little humidity or haze. The very first trickles of floodwater were discernible in the Okavango Delta – a godsend for the increasingly parched landscape and its inhabitants – and the wildlife was excellent.

This is in contrast with October – one of the hottest months of the year in Botswana with daytime temperatures that often reach over 40° Celsius. However, if you can stand the heat and avoid the midday sun, this is the peak time for elephants and buffalos in the now-full Delta and beside rivers such as the Chobe. It’s a time of plenty for predators as the heat takes its inevitable toll of some of the plains game. And the heronries are chock-full of birds - an awesome sight!

After flying into Maun, the Delta region’s capital, our first stop was Moremi Game Reserve. Within just a few hours’ drive, our first campsite offered everything you could expect of a true African safari: a semi-circle of walk-in tents in a thorntree thicket – set close enough for security, yet far enough apart for privacy, each with a verandah, comfy beds with bedlinen, a duvet and the all-important 'bushbaby' i.e. a hot water bottle, plus an al fresco en suite bathroom with a bush shower (hot water on demand - just ask) and long-drop toilet with a proper seat. A lodge may offer more in the way of creature comfort, but there’s little to rival the sheer exhilaration of bush camping.

This is Africa as it should be. Although campers now benefit from gizmos such as a fridge, battery chargers (for cameras etc.) and LED lighting, all cooking is still done over an open fire, and all baking in a Dutch oven. Lying in bed at night with just the thickness of a canvas tent wall between you and the rustles, coughs and roars outside in the shrubbery touched a deep and primitive part of the soul, reawakening emotions that have lain dormant since the epoch of hunter-gatherers who never knew the security of a permanent home.

Eating outdoors – whether in the mess tent or under the stars around a campfire – added another glorious dimension. The days somehow revolved around meals: porridge, coffee and toast around the fire as the first rays of the sun crept into the sky, a leisurely brunch around midday after a morning’s game viewing, a fortifying afternoon tea and cakes (not that anyone needed much fortifying!) before the second outing of the day, then drinks and nibbles around the fire again, followed by dinner by lantern-light.

We were totally in tune with our environment – rising uncomplainingly just before dawn when the trees were silhouetted by the first faint glow on the horizon, and struggling to stay awake for very long after darkness had fallen. Relaxing around the campfire with a drink after dinner, if we made it to nine o’clock it was considered a late night! And the camp crew mollycoddled us, catering for our every need.

However – unsurprisingly, and just as it should be - the absolute highlight was the wildlife. Our guide, Disho, had the eyes of a hawk and while driving could spot and identify far-off birds that we found hard to see even when he was directing our binocular gaze towards them. And his ability to find, track and predict the movement of everything from the most elusive of large mammals to the tiniest insect was a thing of sheer wonder, which allowed us to enter and understand the animal kingdom and its complex inter-relationships. There was nothing he didn’t know...

It would be hard to beat the wildlife we saw during our nine days in the bush! Several sightings of wild dogs included a pack around 30-strong that ran right through our campsite just as we were polishing off breakfast! We found them again later and followed them as they hunted. In fact, we saw wild dogs in all three locations we explored: Moremi, Khwai and Chobe National Park.

Of the other predators, we had some eight fantastic leopard sightings from very close: the best a magnificent lone male relaxing high in a tree with its prey jammed into a fork alongside it for safekeeping, and elsewhere a pair keeping watch from an elevated kopje, in search of a meal. Lion too were in evidence everywhere: a handsome male devouring a recent kill with obvious and much bone-crunching relish (although we missed the kill itself), the spectacle two brothers roaring to one another at dusk with such raw power that the bodywork of our vehicle vibrated in sympathy, and – in total contrast – the antics of a playful group of cubs with a pride of females.

We spent time watching a young female babysitting for a bunch of pups at a spotted hyena den while the pack was off hunting, and watched black-backed (now known to us as Jack Black) jackal foraging. We saw serval (very lucky!), African wild cat (similarly!) and bat-eared fox. We came across all the usual suspects (and some not so usual): elephant everywhere including one herd of as many as 30, hippo, Burchell’s zebra, giraffe, buffalo (a herd of 150+!), blue wildebeest, impala, greater kudu, tsessebe, red lechwe, sable (a herd of seven), eland, steenbok, roan, Chacma baboon, vervet monkey, dwarf, banded, yellow and slender mongooses, scrub hare, Nile crocodile and more – far too many to mention them all.

And, although it wasn’t specifically a birding trip, and not even the best time of year for birds, our very relaxed birdlist nevertheless ran to around 120 species. So all in all it was a Best of Botswana that would be hard to better...

Discover the Best of Boswana on this small group wildlife adventure or contact us for more details.