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Botswana, October 2010 - Moremi Game Reserve

Moremi is the only part of the Okavango Delta that is open to self-drive vehicles. Most of the delta is given over to concession areas which have expensive lodges and fly their guests in from Maun. There are 4 campsites within the Park but as they are now run by 3 separate companies it took a whole afternoon driving around Maun and visiting them before we finally managed to book 3 nights in Moremi.

The night before we were due to go into the Park we stayed at Kazikini Community Campsite (S19 35.428 E23 48.191) which is only 40 minutes drive from the Moremi South Gate entrance.

We had a large pitch under a shady acacia tree.

The ablutions were open air reed structures with solar panels to for heating and pumping the water.

We were up early the following morning and at the Park entrance soon after 6am.

To start with we were driving through mopane forest although at this time of the year with no leaves on the trees and pretty well all of them leveled off at around 2m high by elephants it didn’t look like much of a forest!  

 

Later we came out onto the edge of the floodplain of the Okavango Delta and started to see impala, lechwe and zebra.. 

After an hour or so Kev stopped to have a look at some spoor (footprints) on the sandy track.  There were a few impala nearby and I heard them making their alarm call.  They weren’t looking at us but in the opposite direction and suddenly I saw the back of a lion just over the top on a fallen tree but he soon disappeared from sight.  We turned around and drove back a little way but there was no sign of him so we turned around again and soon came across a track which took us to the far side of the bushes so we followed it and, suddenly, there he was lying in the shade of some bushes. We stopped and had coffee and leftover ‘beer’ cake from last night while we watched him. 

After a while he got up and carried on walking along the track so once we’d finished our coffee we followed and soon had him in our sights.  We never got too close and he didn’t seem at all bothered by us.  He stopped again for another rest,  went to have a drink and then another lie down.  I suppose that we were ‘with’ him for the best part of ½ hour – a wonderful experience. 

We stopped at Third Bridge camp for a night...

... and could see some giraffe nearby.

Next morning we crossed the rather rickety Third Bridge on our way to the campsite at Xakanaxa.

There's a lot more water in Moremi than is usual for this time of year and quite a few of the tracks were impassable.

As there's so much water around the game haven't had to congregate around the waterholes so are much more spread out than they usually are in October but we did see some herds of zebra and wildebeest.

We had a huge camping area at Xakanaxa with a nice view over the Okavango.

We drove down to an area called Paradise Pools and, in the distance, I could see a lioness under a bush.

As we drove closer we noticed some other lionesses and a lion nearby. After driving around for a while we found 6 lionesses and 1 young lion. They had obviously eaten recently (we could see plenty of vultures in the sky but couldn't se a carcass) and were resting, occasionally getting up to move into the shade.

One of the lionesses appeared to have got some meat stuck in her teeth!

With all the water around there were also plenty of birds.

Pied kingfisher.

A young blacksmiths lapwing.

We'd seen another vehicle go across this water so we knew that it wasn't too deep.

On the way back I waded across so that I could take some photos of Kevin driving through the water.

Our third night was back at Third Bridge and we decided to go on a sunset cruise. We left at 4pm and spent nearly 2 hours negotiating narrow channels, often having to back up to get around corners or stopping to free the propeller of weeds. We eventually reached the place the guides wanted us to see, a tree with a colony of nesting spoonbills. I then asked how long it would take to get back and was told that we had to go back the same way.....

One of the narrow channels that we had to travel along.


We occasionally passed through area of more open water.

One of the spoonbill nests.

Our best sight was of a little bittern.

On the way back I did manage to get several sunset shots.

By 7pm it was dark and we still had a long way to go. Around 8.30 we heard another boat and discovered that a search party had come out to find us. We finally arrived back at Third Bridge at 8.50pm - so a 2 hour trip had turned into nearly 5 hours! MInd you we were amazed that our guide was able to find his way back in the dark, how he chose the correct channels to follow I really don't know.

The following morning we left the Park. Driving back to South Gate we were lucky enough to see 2 more lions lying down near a waterhole. As we watched one of them got up for a drink and then wandered off to find somewhere else to lay down. We've certainly done well with lion sightings in Moremi.

Just before we crossed the border in Botswana a vehicle passing us threw up a stone which caused a small crack in the windscreen. We weren't able to get it repaired in Tshabong or Ghanzi and by the time we got to Maun the crack had enlarges so we needed to get the windscreen replaced.

After 3 days in Moremi we returned to Maun for a couple of days. We once again stopped at the campsite at the Sedia Hotel (S19 57.195 E23 28.735) as it was quiet, cheap and we had the use of the hotel pool.

Normally the Thamalakane River, which goes past the hotel and campsite, is dry by the end of May but due to the biggest floods for 20 or so years there’s still plenty of water in the river.  This river is the only outflow from the Okavango Delta, mind you it only takes about 3% of the water than enters the Delta, the rest is swallowed up in the marshes and swamps and by evaporation. Despite our experience on the Third Bridge boat trip we did take an sunset cruise at the Sedia Hotel for an hour and a half and enjoyed it.

1. Mabuasehube area of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.

2. Masetleng Pan in the Kaa Concession.

3. Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

4. Moremi Game Reserve.

5. Savuti area of Chobe National Park.

6. Chobe National Park - Riverfront.

Diary (Word '97 document).

 

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This is the web of the communal spider which covered an entire bush and is in fact made up of thousands of webs.