Game viewing

So enough about all that logistics stuff, you go on safari to see animals, so what animals did we actually see?

As I mentioned, each place has different habitats and therefore different animals. The picture is along the banks of the Chobe River (Botswana) in the afternoon when the elephants come down to drink and splash and make a mess in the mud and dust. They really seem to enjoy it, especially the babies who are not too skilled yet with their trunks, so they just lay down and roll around in the mud while the adults are happily flinging mud and/or dust all over themselves. I find these groups really fascinating, they are made up mostly of females and their young. They are constantly touching and snorting and communicating in ways we can't begin to understand. The small babies must think the world is made out of legs since they are kept to the inside of the group as the older ones keep a close watch out.

Chobe game lodge being along the river has lots of elephants, hippos, and crocs. Some of the crocs are just huge, laying in the sun digesting whatever they had eaten and not bothering about anything. Inland we also saw lots of different antelopes, impala, kudu, bushbuck, waterbuck etc. Our guide was Moses and we had seven people in our land rover. He took us all over the place through the bush, always looking over the side of the car to pick up any footprints that he could see as we went. We did see a couple lions from a distance, it looked like they were sneaking up on a kudu, so we sat an watched for a while. The lions split up and went at the kudu from different sides, but in the end the kudu sensed their presence and decided to move somewhere else. The lions laid down for a nap.

Did you know that lions can sleep for 20 hours a day? Life at the top of the food chain.

Chief's camp, being in the middle of the Okavango Delta, was starting to dry out after the rains. The areas of open water were shrinking and turning into lush grasslands. The low hills covered in bush and trees were drier still. Our guide was Ishmael. This place was teaming with lions, the first drive we were on, within a couple minutes we were parked amongst a group of lions dozing on the lush green grass. We were also lucky enough to see a couple of different leopards. One highlight was seeing all of the "big five" within a two hour period. Then on the way back to camp we got stuck in the mud, and the three other jeeps sent to rescue us also got stuck and then the farm tractor too. A real circus as darkness fell. In the end we stepped out onto some pieces of wood and got to dry land where the last remaining jeep was parked. The guides apparently had quite a night getting things sorted while we enjoyed dinner back at camp, complete with a visiting elephant, that casually tore apart a nearby tree in search of some tasty leaves.

Mola Mola was drier than either of the previous places, although the Sand River had water in it. The same basic animals were seen there, but a lot more of them. Instead of a solitary rhino, we followed a heard of about 20 one evening and were right in the middle of a large herd of buffalo as they calmly munched their way along the riverbank. Although known for their aggressiveness, our guide, Lucky, assured us that in a large herd they are pretty calm. One feature of the buffalo is the lack of a mock charge. The typical rhino or elephant may make a move but will likely pull up once the point has been made. The buffalo on the other hand doesn't stop once he gets going, time for the driver to be on his toes.

We saw a rhino demonstrate with a large group of lions. The lions were laying around after gorging on a giraffe that they had killed. For some reason, this one rhino decided to chase the lions, he made a mock charge at each one in turn making the lion get up and trot out of the way. When the rhino was satisfied, he would then choose another lion as target and and chase that one away. Maybe the rhino had been friends with the giraffe?

In all these cases, the animals almost completely ignored the vehicles. A lion might raise his head and then return to snoozing, the rhinos simply went on grazing. The guides were careful about how close we came and it seemed pretty close sometimes. It's not that the animals are tame, they are just going about their business ignoring these weird wheeled contraptions that are sometimes around. I think for the animals it's a reasonable deal, they just have to put up with a few tourists in return for having free rein in their natural habit. And at night, they can be as wild and free as they can be.