Safari!

As promised in the last Newsletter, I thought I’d share a few pictures from August’s safari to Botswana. I took over a thousand, even once the rubbish was discarded plus two hours of video which still needs editing. The trip lasted two weeks, of which we spent twelve days travelling in an open-sided safari truck through the wildlife reserves of northern Botswana.

I could not have imagined how many big cats I would see, and how close we’d come. By and large they completely ignored the big green truck and the human noises and just got on with their lives. The cat count included five leopards, including a mum-and-junior pair guarding their impala kill in a tree and one which stalked down the road in front of us stalking a herd of warthogs.

By the fifth day in the bush it had become ‘oh lions, yeah’ as we saw 33, including a lioness feeding her cubs and three lion/lioness pairs getting frisky. Our final encounter in Moremi wildlife reserve was five minutes drive from our camp. A pride of nine had brought down three cape buffalo in the night and were busily eating them watched by a good hundred vultures.

The carnivore count increased when we finally found a pack of wild dogs we’d been seeking for two days. After spending a couple of hours looking for a hyena den then waiting for one to appear, two from a different pack turned up that night in our camp. Pictures also show a jackal eating a springhare and a bat eared fox we spotted during our hyena hunt.

And yes the usual suspects; zebra, wildebeest and many forms of antelope. Hippos are always fun, we could hear them in the night when we stayed on a houseboat, and one actually chased our launch, ‘surfing’ in its wake. I’d been amazed by the giraffe fight from the David Attenborough Africa series so was surprised to see male giraffe having a go at each other by slapping necks on two occasions. We were disappointed not to see a cheetah, though they are rare in the region, and northern Botswana doesn’t have any rhinos.

Northern Botswana is home to over 100,000 elephants and they impose control on the forest ecosystems. Family herds were common sightings but as we drove from Savuti to Moremi just after dawn we saw a massive bachelor herd of at least 150 elephants heading for the horizon in four parallel columns.

The trip I went on was the 14 day Botswana safari with Explore, who specialise in small group excursions, many off the usual tourist trai. It’s not for the faint hearted with most of the trip being through the bush on rough tracks deep with dust. We enjoyed 5am wake up calls for morning game drives while ‘wild camping’, hence my unshaven look. I was back in time for book launch week, but hyenas sniffing around the tents and lions roaring in the night are not to be forgotten!