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Botswana, World Trip 2018-19

Travelling the pans – Makgadikgadi & Nxai Pans

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After our disappointing time in Khwai and Moremi, we were a bit done with staring into (empty) bushes, aka safaris. So we decided to see some landscapes in between! From Maun, we drove to Nata in one day, and then on to Makgadikgadi Pans national park. This park also has some animals, but it’s mainly famous for its large salt pans that you can in parts drive across. On our way down South to Kubu Island, it was first more bushes and grassland that we encountered though.

Kubu Island is a pretty island full of baobab trees. We camped right at the edge of the pan to see the trees in the beautiful evening light and witness the sunset over the pans. It was beautiful and definitely something different than bushes!

Next day, we drove back „up“ on a different route, to Gweta. This time, the route led us across the pans – which was really cool at first!

At first, until the pans became wetter and muddier and we got more and more worried about getting stuck. I ended up walking halfway across one pan, with Mathijs driving behind me, to ensure the ground was solid enough. At one point though, there was just no good way to go. And surely enough, this was where we got ourselves stuck! Oops. After trying some ways to get out and a mud-shower for me (trying to push is not always the best idea), we luckily made it out! We were quite relieved I must say…

The rest of the drive was easy and dry, passing by some famous baobabs up to Gweta where we were happy to see the pool at Planet Baobab Camping waiting for us. Just what we needed after our mud adventures!

From here, we drove to Nxai Pans the next day. Here, the pans are less visible, more overgrown by plants, and there are more animals. Safari time again! We spent again one night in the park, driving around the day before and half the day afterwards. Well… while there weren’t loads of animals again, we did get a bit luckier than in Moremi and Khwai: Mathijs spotted a lioness hidden in a bush, who, after waiting for a bit, stood up and went for a drink. At least, a little lion show for us!

Also, Nxai had one really good waterhole where there were always some animals. This is something we missed it Moremi. Just being able to sit there and watch. At one point, more and more elephants came in for a drink and there was plenty of action! They seemed to be from different groups and not always friendly with each other.

Nxai Pans is a small national park, but it was quite nice to visit and provided some easier animal sightings again.

Botswana, World Trip 2018-19

Unknown Khwai & famous Moremi

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We exited Chobe national park in the South at Khwai region. This region is situated between Chobe and Moremi national parks and not a national park itself even though it has lots of animals, especially elephants, but even leopards (apparently, they eluded us once again). We spent an afternoon driving around there, mainly spotting hippos and some antelopes – not the most exciting but still nice.

That night we decided to wild camp, as the camping didn’t have any facilities whatsoever but charged 30€ pp. Crazy! And as there’s no fence around the campsite either, there really is no difference to wild camping (other than paying 60€). At night, we had a very early dinner and were soon surrounded by all kind of animal noises. I think this was our „wildest“ night. Sometimes we woke up, asking each other „what was that!??“ – only when a lion roared right next to our tent, it was rather clear which animal that ROAR belonged to.

After a rather sleepless night, we drove around a bit more in the Khwai region – unfortunately though rain came in and our spottings soon went down to zero. We wild camped again, but at a much better spot. No animals but birds around us.

Next day, we went into Moremi game reserve at the North gate. We drove all the way to Xakanaxa campsite – but again the luck was not on our side. Some nice landscapes, but otherwise… just not many animals in general. It seems that we really chose the wrong season for Moremi, too bad!

In the afternoon, when driving up to Dead Tree Island, we at least came across a teenage male lion – but he was very sleepy. For the rest of the day, we didn’t end up seeing much else other than bushes. Lots of bushes.

In the night, we got visited by an elephant who was a little too curious for our liking, squeezing between our car and the bushes next to it and moving our car while doing so! Ouuuf. A bit scary. He went on to destroy our neighbours‘ trailer tent – while they were in there, sleeping (well, not so much anymore at that point). Crazy!

Next day, we woke up early once again and drove out via Third Bridge to the South gate. We went all around the highly praised Mbola Island, but didn’t end up seeing much of anything. It was frustrating. Even more frustrating was the drive out of the park afterwards. Loads and loads of deep puddles, of a size that they should be called pools rather than puddles. It was exhausting, especially for Mathijs (the driver) and we didn’t get rewarded with any good sightings.

From the South gate, we moved on to Maun to spend the night, get organised and plan our next few days.

Botswana, General

Chobe National Park

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After our adventures in the Caprivi Strip in Namibia, we crossed the border to Botswana at Ngoma Bridge, where the transit route led us past Chobe NP directly to Kasane. Here, we spent 3 nights, stocking up and organising ourselves and doing some game drives in Chobe Riverfront. This part of Chobe national park is famous for its big herds of elephants and generally a big density of wildlife. At first, we were not so lucky, spotted only some impalas here and there, a lone elephant, some hippos rather far away and some buffaloes. But – we were happy to briefly see a honey badger and finally saw some mongoose as well.

We kept staring into the bushes, hoping for some cats… and were rewarded with 4 female lions at one point, one of them still a teenager, giving heads to the other cats. Cuteness overload!!!

We watched them for well over an hour, just about 3 m away from our car – and we had them just for ourselves for the first 30 min or so. After a while, they got up to drink, which was super special and nice to see as well.

Then, they disappeared into the high grass… Another great lion encounter in our pocket! On the way out of the park that day, we were suddenly surrounded by hundreds of elephants. The place was just crawling with elephants. They all walked to the river for driving and back… really cool!

But we also had many hours of just seeing nothing… it was weird. I think despite our close lion encounter and the ellies, we had expected a little bit more from Chobe Riverfront. On the 2nd day, even the guides from the safari cars started asking us if we had seen anything…so apparently they weren’t seeing anything either. Don’t get me wrong, we still saw lots of cool stuff in between – suddenly many giraffes, a big herd of impalas,… but there wasn’t this good constant supply of animals as we had it in Kruger national park in South Africa.

Hoping for better cat sightings, we made our way to Savuti afterwards. Savuti is reached only via treacherous sandy roads and deep in the national park. We were lucky to still get 2 nights booked at the most expensive (and at the same time very basic) campsite of our world trip so far. 100 USD/night! 😦 You pay for the location because the campsite itself is beyond basic.

Our drive-in went well despite some worries. In the morning we saw some hyenas with cubs right next to the Chobe Riverfront transit road. So much about being a „transit“ road!

The drive to Kachikau was quick and on asphalt, then it was suddenly deep sand! But we were prepared and all went well. Right after the Chobe park entrance, we saw some elephants… and after reaching Savuti campsite we parked our car only to find an elephant rubbing his butt against the tree next to it. Later, we had some more elephants coming by to eat from nearby trees. Pretty cool!

We spent 2 nights in Savuti, game driving around as much as possible. Unfortunately, we were not too lucky with our sightings, maybe because of the torrential rainstorm that came in just when we arrived. It did clear up again, but we always feel like there’s less animals to see when it’s been raining. They find water anywhere and don’t have to come to the waterholes, so these become rather boring and empty. To be honest, Savuti is probably hyped a bit too much as well – hyped as a „cat heaven“ and just in general that there’s lots of game around. We did enjoy our time, but there were lots of hours of driving around without seeing much.

We did have 2 great cat encounters though luckily. On our first morning, after hearing lions roar the whole night, we followed those roars and finally found their spot with some safari cars parked there already. Fortunately, these tour cars usually leave rather quickly, so soon we had the lions to ourselves! This time it was 3 females, 1 male aaaand the cutest little cub!! We came back multiple times in the course of the day to see what they were up to. Even though they didn’t move much, there were always some things going on and especially the cub made it very interesting, cute and fun to watch!!

Awwwww. Cuteness overload once again!

Our 2nd cat encounter was even more special. On our last day, we headed South to the cheetah plains. After staring into the high grass for hours, we had pretty much given up hope (just like for the elusive leopard which we searched for many hours), when suddenly 3 safari cars went past us in full speed. Woaaah. That could only mean something cool had been spotted surely!? We followed them and they led us straight to two cheetahs! Yay!! Finally, finally cheetahs. We were so lucky since we would have never spotted them ourselves and also wouldn’t have dared to get so close (it required some off-road driving which is usually prohibited). Haha, for once those tour cars were helpful!

And with that, our time in Chobe came to an end. Our last day was in many ways my favourite one – not just because of the cheetahs. We had quite a nice drive South to the gate with much more game than the previous days, a full waterhole for once again, and elephants here and there. Sweet! A good way to say goodbye, Chobe!