Deer Park

Our safari to Chobe was cancelled at the last minute. In fact, in the parking lot. Due to the heavy rains the track through the Savuti marsh was flooded out.

But they had a backup for us, a track into the Okavango delta to Moremi to see something we wouldn’t see up in Chobe. I took my GPS along.

So here’s a complete safari story. Truck and passengers. Me, Solomon, Desa, Boka and driver

It turned out to be fantastic. Here’s the OSM map of the delta. Much better than the Tracks4Africa map in detail

This was the final 28 miles. The way points were the first sightings of some major animals. I forgot the most important, but you’ll see that further down

And the final mile or so

And the stats, one way. We averaged 14mph over 62 miles in 4 hours 20 minutes. Back was quicker 

The first long stretch took an hour. No animals. warm but not hot. Us up in the wind stream, very chill and nice

Then the corner north towards the south gate. Nicer

Then elephant poop. You can tell because unlike other big game, elephant poop is a bit stinky and massive. Each piece here is bigger than a cantaloupe

And here he is. A beauty. We all explode in applause

Solomon jumps out to take a selfie

Boka jumps out to take a pee (note 1)

The movie

And our first giraffe was a little hard to spot against the tree

Another elephant, how we see stuff from the truck. It’s very cool

Some impala on the road

As we pass

A giant elephant. We’re told not to get out of the truck this time

And another giraffe

The movie

It gets swampy and even more beautiful

Then the south gate. Everyone has to register here unless they don’t come out. We see why later

Here’s a nice delta map on the wall with our destination shown

And we’re off, now into the delta

Fantastic scenes

Gorgeous

About 10 miles of the track was very slow. It started with little pools

Then became slow work

We passed a broken down truck, assistance arrived

And later someone else, lost. No GPS

Past Maribou storks, one of my least favourite birds. You should see them attack a carcus, or a live animal. They’re the zombies of the bird world, way spookier than vultures, which manage to eat carcuses without looking evil

Close up

These are red Lechwe. They’re the fastest of the antelope family

More nice driving

A huge grassy plain, trimmed to perfection by the antelope

Carefree, as they can see the predator lions and leopards from a big distance

Then we approach a pond

And in the middle, about 30 hippos. My first ever

Here they are, noisy and stinky

The movie

We park in the shade to watch them and have lunch

Solomon and the driver eating chicken and cold French fries

Boka and Desa do girl things

Then we head home, back the way we came

A good giraffe movie

Then something happened which not many people see, a leopard

And here he is, doesn’t care as we get close with the truck

Then moves off

Further along, Zebras

Later, storms building

So, the Okavango seen. Editorial later. What I didn’t see here I’ll see later, close to the Zambia border.

Talking about carcuses, I stopped on my bike the other day when I saw a dozen vultures in the shade of a tree. Here they are, with one in flight. They’re waiting for the cars to pass

So they can return to this

note 1: permission from Boka obtained