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Published: February 19th 2007
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While in Capetown, South Africa, our tour group had a bus driver named Joos for several days. Our tour manager, Catherine, called him "a bit of a country boy." Anyway, Joos asked Catherine what our group was doing after we left the Capetown area. She explained we were going on to Victoria Falls and then doing photo safaris in Botswana. Yoos eyed our group of 14 and skeptically noted, "
This group is going on safari?" Catherine explained that in actuality, we were staying in some pretty luxurious camps and taking games drives in open vehicles. Yoos' response was,"
That's not a safari! Safari is when you take your rifle, your tent and your donkey and you go into the bush to hunt animals!"
Well, Yoos, we didn’t do what you would call a “safari,” but we did do some pretty amazing game drives in Botswana at both Chobe National Park and the Moremi Game Reserve in the Okavango Delta. The schedule went like this: We got up early each morning, at either 5:30 or 6:30, to go on the morning game drive; we’d come back to camp for midday; we’d head out at 4:00 pm for the afternoon game drive; and
we’d be back at camp by sundown. There were 10 game drives in all and each one was unique. With all the animals we saw, the rangers who drove us would get very close - including to lions, cheetahs, leopards and rhino - as close as the animals would allow. So the pictures you see here are zoomed, yes, but we really were very close in most cases. It was a little disconcerting to me to be so close to lions but it was almost as if they looked right through us. Our ranger guide, Ali, explained that the animals don’t see the people in the vehicle as long as you don’t stand up and move around. They see the vehicle and all its contents (i.e. passengers) as one unit and as long as they don’t feel threatened by it, they go about their business and we go about ours. So we were able to sit and watch zebra, giraffes, hippos, monkeys, plus the above-mentioned animals, for as long as we wanted, and watch them we did. It was quite an experience.
There is one story that needs to be told. As of our 9th safari (out of 10) we
Sunset in Moremi
This was the sunset our first night in Chief's Camp. Beautiful. had seen and photographed 4 out of what is known as “The Big Five” - elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo and rhino. The only one we were missing was the elusive rhino. Rhinoceros aren’t present in Chobe National Park and were only re-introduced into Moremi 4 or 5 years ago. We were told right up front that we probably wouldn’t see one. On that 9th safari, we spent nearly 3 hours driving around looking at rhino tracks, trying to determine where they might be hiding out, all to no avail. Tyler was so disappointed. But the next morning, on our last game drive, Tyler told Ali we didn’t need to try and chase down the rhino and instead, we wanted to see the lions one more time. So Ali started to drive us out to the area where one of the lion prides like to hang out. After a leisurely hour or so passed, we received a radio call from another ranger who had spotted the rhino but told us they had gone into the bush and probably couldn’t be tracked. So we continued on our quest for the lions. About 10 minutes later, we got another radio call that in
fact they were able to track the rhino and we had better come quick. Ali turned the land cruiser onto another road back and we started to fly. Within 2 minutes we ran into that pride of lions and stopped long enough to snap a few pictures. But we couldn’t stay! We sped along and at a little distance saw 4 or 5 elephants that we could only wave to. In another few minutes we came upon an entire herd of cape buffalo grazing in a field - truly an awesome sight, but we had to continue on - we figured we could come back to see them later. Within another 5 minutes, we were in the bush, in radio contact with two other rangers, and tracking those rhino. Ali stopped the vehicle to determine a way through the bush and about 20 yards away, on top of a termite mound sat a leopard cub and his mother in a tree branch near him! They took off before we got a picture but no matter, we had the rhinos in sight and we spent the next 15-20 minutes feasting our eyes upon those bad boys. There were 5 of them.
Chobe Chilwero Camp
This was the view from the lawn of our camp. This camp did have a wire fence to keep the elephants out -- there are over 60,000 elephants in Chobe National Park. I tell this story because after it was all over, we realized that we had seen “The Big Five” in a space of about 15-20 minutes! Ali said that was defnitely a record for him and one he didn’t ever think would be broken!
We hope you enjoy our pictures of the wildlife of Botswana as much as we enjoyed taking them!
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Carla
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AMAZING!!!
That is really all I can say - I have always wanted to go to Africa and to get to see these pictures makes me feel like I was there with ya'll ( and I REALLY wish I was there)!! I LOVE the lions, which has always been my favorite animal. I am glad that you had a wonderful time. Miss Ya'll!!