June Safari in Botswana

It’s always a nice change to travel to areas outside of your usual stamping ground and so it was with real pleasure that I packed my bags and binoculars and flew south to accompany some guests on a safari to Botswana.

Botswana is a landlocked country just north of South Africa and seventy percent of the landmass lies over the Kalahari Desert.  Its three main sources of income are diamonds, beef and tourism which have made Botswana the richest per capita country in Africa for its tiny population of only two million people. 

Lilac Breasted Roller.

 Our first destination was Zarafa Camp up in the Linyanti region of Northern Botswana on a private concession comprising 300 000 acres of pristine wilderness. The area contains part of the Selinda Channel which connects the Okovango Delta to the Linyanti wetlands and comprises savanna, mopani woodlands, open bush and the wonderful lagoons and floodplains of water, all of which play host to a large population of wild animals.

Our drive from the airstrip gave us cheetah and leopard even before we had time to unpack! The following morning we spent an hour with a mother leopard and her cub while they were playing together.

Male cheetah scanning the plains from a termite mound.

Mother leopard with her cub taking a rest from their play

One of the great features of Zarafa Camp is that they provide a Canon camera with a telephoto zoom lens to each tent during your stay and then burn a CD of your pictures before you leave.

The Okovango Delta from the air as we flew from Zarafa to Mombo.

Our second destination was the legendary Mombo Camp in the heart of the Okovango Delta system.  This camp boasts regular sightings of the ‘Big Five’: Elephant, Rhino, Buffalo, Lion and Leopard. 

Elephant and her calf at Mombo

Lion pride at Mombo

 

 

We did indeed have some great game viewing but perhaps the highlight for me was the female African Wild Dog which had lost the rest of her pack through lion attacks and who had adopted a family of jackals! When she goes hunting they tag along and share in her kills, in fact she will even regurgitate her food for them as if they were her pups!  I suppose her social instincts are so strong that in lieu of other wild dogs she prefers the company of jackal than a solitary existence. This is a truly amazing and unique association which, for me, just reinforces my passion for the wonders and mysteries that nature can hold.

The Mombo Wild Dog which adopted a family of Jackals.

 

Mombo is the only camp in the Okovango Delta system where you can see rhino.  They had been poached to extinction during the eighties and so, in a special project in partnership with the Botswana game department Mombo Camp imported both white and black rhino from South Africa and have re-established these two species in the remote area of the Moremi Game Reserve near Mombo.  There are now around 30 white rhino which are successfully breeding and we were lucky to find a mother with her calf.

White rhino with her calf in the Moremi Game Reserve

Flying between Mombo and Tubu Tree.

Our final camp in Botswana was also in the Okovango Delta and is called Tubu Tree camp.  This is built on an island in the Delta and offers water based activities as well as the game drives.  We went exploring with our guides in traditional mokoro dug-out canoes one evening to experience life at a slower and more peaceful pace.  

The slower pace of exploring in a mokoro

 Finding beauty in some of the smaller animals such as the painted reed frogs with their amazing body art or the splendid water lily flowers like white sunbursts on the surface of the water.  

Painted Reed Frog.

Nothing so much fun than being on a boat.

Water lillies

Lecwe bounding through the shallow water of the lagoon.

Along with the smaller stuff we also enjoyed watching the Lechwe antelope as they ran through the shallow water away from us.  

Tubu Tree camp in the evening light from a mokoro.

The camp looks out over a large lagoon and we came back in our mokoros with the wonderful evening light for a sundowner to remember.

This time of year in Southern Africa is winter and although the days were bright and sunny, the nights were cold.  In the early mornings there was sometimes a ground mist which made some spectacular effects in our photographs.

 

Ilala palm in the early morning mist