Posts Tagged ‘SAFARI’

While the big cats were the main event at this reserve, we also had many, many other spottings.  Here are some photos of the other animals we saw:

Swimming monitor lizard

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The other main event in Sabi Sabi is the last animal of the Big Five that we had yet to see – leopards.  And what a show!  We saw a few different leopards on a few different days, including a fast-paced off-road chase of a leopard on the move.  We were amazed at how the guides were able to find the first cat – another car had seen it but it had moved a little since then.  They were right on and led us to it.  It took a while for me to see at all, and I knew where it was!  I’ll give you a sense of what a leopard laying in the grass looks like:

Can you see it?

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It soon became clear that the specialty of the Sabi Sabi rangers was to find big cats, take you to them, and then take you so close you can’t even believe your eyes.  We had our first encounter with big cats the first morning!  Our guide Neil told us that the lionesses had taken down a Cape buffalo nearby and that we would go to see them feasting on the carcass.  True to their word, there were several lions just hanging about!  They had seemingly eaten their fill at this time and were mostly just focused on digesting.

Relaxing Lions

Lioness takes her turn at relaxation

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I have to start this post out by thanking Phil and Joanna, without whom we never would have been at the Little Bush Camp in the Sabi Sabi private game reserve.  This is absolutely the most luxurious, incredible place I can imagine for seeing these animals and I feel beyond lucky to have spent three nights there.  My photos definitely do not do this place justice.  It was perfect.

Our swank room!

The food was amazing (and endless) with lots of delicious choices for each meal.  I was stuffed constantly!

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Highlights

1. Elephant herd crossing the water - Chobe Natl Park, Botswana
2. Feeling CLOSE to the animals on our Walking Safari - Mosi-oa-tunya, Zambia
3. Finally getting the hang of mokoro driving – Okovango Delta, Botswana
4. Camping out really made us feel like we were on an adventure!
5. Lots of really cool people and animals accompanied us the whole time!

Lowlights

1. Four whole days doing nothing but travel.
2. Poor communication between our guide and Acacia Small Groups – this directly caused delays and low group morale.
3. Getting lost on the way to the first night’s lodge — after 12 hours on the road
4. Constant equipment issues.  We constantly had issues with tent zippers breaking and other people had to sleep in fleece blankets one night before sleeping bags were found!
5. Livingstone sales pitch video for overpriced activities.  This sales pitch lasted for an hour and caused other members of the group to miss out on things – The Waterfront, Zambia

We were sad to leave the campsite when we did – 2 nights just didn’t seem enough to fully appreciate where we were.  However, Maggie and I got to have a completely different experience of the delta once we got out: a 45 minute flight above it!  We were stoked because it had been said that it’s hard to fully appreciate the size of the delta from the ground.  Whoever said that was right!  It was wild to see animals, scenery, and the odd fire from 500-1000 feet up. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Our Plane

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Once we had the camp set up we got to start relaxing.  I found this to be a very laid back part of the trip.  Mornings and evenings we got to go on walks on our beautiful island.  We saw some animals (although nothing as spectacular as in Chobe) and enjoyed the landscape.  It was so nice to get some solid hiking in after spending a lot of time in vehicles!  We saw zebra, lots of kinds of antelope, elephants, hippo, lots of birds, and a snake in the big tree IN OUR CAMPSITE.

Island Scenery

We hiked around a giant baobab tree near the camp

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This post has been a while coming partly because the amazing awesomeness of Chobe National Park is so huge that it’s a pretty intimidating post to write.  This, for me, was a completely magical day.  I wanted elephants and I got ELEPHANTS.  Tiny baby elephants, elephants having mud baths, a huge herd of elephants crossing a river, and even sunset elephants.  This park has the highest concentration of elephants in the world.  In fact, they like it so much that if they try to take the elephants elsewhere to redistribute the population the elephants will walk back over 700 kms to get back to this park.

We got up in the morning in Livingstone, in Zambia and had to wait for some new people to join the tour.  There was a bit of a miscommunication between the head office and our tour leader (the didn’t tell him that some people were not going to show up!) which resulted in a bit of a mad dash to get the ferry across the border.  Fortunately, our guide was looking out for us and arranged for our game drive vehicles to meet us straight off the boat and take us directly to see the animals.

We had a really nice game drive vehicle and driver and had about 2.5 hours of driving up and down the Chobe river looking for wildlife.  There were so many amazing sightings, so if you want to see all the pictures click on any of these and it will take you through to the gallery.  But here are some of my favorite things!  (EDIT: ok, there are about a million pictures below.  But it really was that great!)

First view of the Chobe River

Hippo!

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In the afternoon after our walking safari we headed out to see the famous Victoria Falls.  They were on the low side since it is the dry time of year, but still impressive.  We had about three hours of walking around and taking photos, so I’ll just share a few here.

The spray was pretty intense!

Mom and I hiking around

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We got up early again – around 6am – to depart for our walking safari which started at 7:15 and was to last 3 hours.  Fortunately the chefs at the Waterfront opened the restaurant early (sweet!) and we were able to eat before loading up on the safari vehicle.  It was our first safari 4×4 – seemingly a converted pickup truck with 4 rows of 3 seats in the back.  They very considerately provided poncho-like blankets for the drive to the park, which was fairly cold in an open-air vehicle early in the morning.

En Route to Safari

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