Okavango Delta

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Vumbura Plains. There are not words for how amazing of an experience we had at Vumbura Plains.

In Kalahari, it was about the hunt. However, in the Delta, its about how close you can get to the animals. How close can I get until I can count every spot on a cheetah?

We got off of our bush plain and met ST, our guide. He immediately told us we would be getting up close and personal with the animals. And we did. We got so close to elephants that I could have reached out and touched them. After that, we were in persuit of a leopard, whom we eventually found and followed for a while. it was the closest I thought that we could ever get to a leopard. To any animal, in fact. And then, ST drove us up to a cheetah, which we could get jsut as close to. In the Delta, we were of absolutely no concern to the animals. They understood that we were just there to observe. Just when I thought we had seen it all, we found a pride of lions with cubs, who also let us come as close as we wanted to.

This became especially apparent the next day, when we were following a pack of wild dogs on the hunt. After a long morning, they finally took down a baby impala and tore it apart to eat it, while it was still alive. They ate the still bleeding flesh right in front of us. It was hard to watch; that baby impala did not stand a chance. Not many of them do, as only about 50% of impalas do make it to maturity. As hard as it is, it is the way things work out here in the bush.

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