After 3 nights in desiccated, dusty Savute, we moved to Sango Safari Camp in the marginally-wetter Khwai community area, which is a 30’ light plane flight to the south-west.
The camp is again tented, and managed and staffed by local San bush people. Twice-daily bush drives can head north through the local Khwai Concession, or cross the wacky pole bridge to the main entrance of the wonderful Moremi reserve. Once again our guide, July, was excellent, and was entirely responsible for placing me time and again in good positions for photographing the varied wildlife.
Crossing the rickety pole bridge across the largely-dry marsh in to the Moremi reserve
There is much more water here, with the Khwai river still feeding some swampy areas despite the dry season, and this gave considerable variety to the wildlife, plus the opportunity for lodge vehicles to get stuck in the mud! We saw many wonderful, relaxed elephant, daily leopard, lion, giraffe, zebra, African darter, tawny eagle, buffalo, cardinal woodpecker, egret, saddle-billed stork, jacana, read lechwe, impala, magpie shrike, sacred ibis, wild dog and white-backed vulture,
Click on the first image in the block below and it will open in a lightbox - you can then click right and left to view the images. The blog continues below this block.
One of the great attractions of this area is to do a mokoro trip - traditionally these were wooden dugout canoes, but we were taken by a couple of expert guides in more stable fibreglass versions. Together with a French couple from our lodge we had wonderful sightings of elephant crossing the river, a painted frog and fish eagles, and the water and reeds teemed with insect life.
The low and wobbly viewpoint gave a whole new perspective on a hippo, which initially glared at us belligerently, but one of the guides spoke to him in a native tongue and he stomped off up the bank…
A magical experience.
Although there was much more flowing and standing water than in Savute, parts of both reserves were extremely dry and dusty, characterised by the stiffly-held seedheads of Okavango sage highlit by low sun, and in the last block of images I try to capture the impressions these savannah areas made on me.
