We left bright and early from camp, glared at our rowdy neighbours on our drive out and within 15 minutes had seen giraffe, elephant, wildebeest, zebra and impala. Wow! After crossing another two more wooden bridges, we saw a herd of waterbuck snorting at a leopard as he crossed their domain with his tail curled up. He retreated with dignity as they had safety in numbers. We have amazing video footage of a hippo rise out of the water and yawn reminding us who has the biggest teeth. By now we had maybe been in the car an hour!! Sure made up for last night already!!!
The three days of rain earlier in June has caused driving mayhem in the national parks. I just found out on June 8 - 10 they had 250mm of rain..the most in living memory!! We've heard stories of vehicles ruined, being stuck in 60cm puddles and rescue not arriving for 48 hours!!
We have driven through hundreds of massive deep puddles…really mini ponds in some cases. Our once white landy is now covered in a thick layer of brown mud that is baked on!! There was one section where we had to cross a marsh area that was flooded…as we started to go in we could tell the water was too deep. We retreated to assess a plan B and found another less flooded option however as we approached that realized it too had deep patches. Lucky with Deon (aka Indiana Jones) at the helm we found a slightly shallower path and stayed afloat and enjoyed the rest of the 4x4 driving challenges that Moremi faced us with.
GPS is our friend again and safely showed us the way out of Moremi. We have a great map that has lots of reference points with GPS coordinates so we just made our way from point to point. There are very few signs to show you the way in the park and there always seems an option to go left, right or straight that’s not on the map so not sure how you’d ever find your way out without GPS.Once we left North Gate at Moremi, we were at an area called Kwai, which is renowned for great viewing. The lady at the gate said there was only one road to Savute and many people had gone that way today so just follow the road. Within minutes, there was a left or a right? Luckily a safari vehicle overtook us and we followed them out of Kwai. He knew all the mini ponds to avoid thankfully! We had an amazing game drive along the way seeing hippo, elephant (wading through the river and on land), wildebeest, kudu, crocodile, buffalo, and a water monitor eating a big fish.
We got to our campsite at Savute late afternoon and saw massive ellie footprints under the tree that marked our spot. Savute is well known for big lion and elephant populations. There was a huge bull elephant in one of the campsites and its resident hiding behind his landrover!! Lion still remains only heard and not yet seen but we are still on the hunt. There is meant to be wild dog in the area so will add those to our tracking list.
The noises of the night at camp had us constantly scanning the area for eyes. Not really sure what I’d have done if I saw any!
Getting a reservation at campsites in Botswana in the busy season is almost impossible as they say they are all “fully booked”. We fortunately got 1 night at each of Third Bridge Campsite, Savute Campsite, then had a “homeless” night followed by 3 nights at Ihaha Campsite. We found out by a guard at an entrance gate that we could use our payment for one of our Ihaha nights and apply it to our homeless night and stay in the “Reserve Area” at Savute for an extra night and then pay the extra fees on the way out.
Each day we are baffled by all the empty camping spots at the “fully booked” campsites and can’t understand why they haven’t come up with a better system. The other mind blowing thing is the scrutiny with which the Park Officers review your paperwork as you go through the various gates and discuss it amongst each other and then eventually let us through. We can’t figure out why my Booking Confirmation doesn’t look like everyone else’s as they are all issued through their Dept of Wildlife. But we do know we got so lucky with 6 nights in the parks of camping!
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