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Botswana, October 2010 - Savuti area of the Chobe National Park

There are two possible routes from Maun to Kasane. One is to use the tar road via Nata and the other is to drive through Chobe National Park, which is what we wanted to do. We'd hoped to be able to book a couple of nights at Savuti, which is the only public campsite in the southern area of the park, but we only managed to get 1 night.

It took us 3 hours to get to the Mahebe (South Gate) entrance(S19 06.169 E23 59.113) and then another 3 hours to reach the camp (S18 33.912 E24 03.811). We were told, at the entrance gate, that we had to use the Sandridge Road as the Marsh Road was still partially flooded.

We discovered when we arrived at the camp that the Savuti channel, which is usually a dry riverbed, was full of water for the first time in around 40 years.....

We had a lovely, huge site overlooking the channel. During the evening and overnight there was a thunderstorm so we put the flysheet on the tent - for only the second time on this trip.

In Moremi we saw plenty of lions, here at Savuti it was elephants, some of them actually in the camp - there are no fences around the campsite although the ablutions are within a huge circular wall to protect them from the elephants who, in the past, have destroyed the building to get to water.

2 of the elephants that we saw in the campsite.



Our GPS indicated that there was some rock art in this cave, and there was a signpost to that effect as well. but we couldn't find any.

 

 

As in Moremi at this time of the year there's usually only water at a few waterholes which means lots of game and predators in one area but with all the water in the channel which has overflowed into the marsh the animals are still spread out all over the park.

You can usually drive along and over the channel at several points but with so much water there was only 1 crossing point which had been made near the campsite. Stones had been put in the bottom of the channel to make it easier to cross.

We did have a drive out in the afternoon but kept finding tracks that never got anywhere because of all the water. We did see quite a lot of water birds....

....and plenty of elephants, usually on their own or in small groups.

This old bull was doing his best to destroy this tree.

This young calf had a bad back leg.

We saw lots of yellow billed kites especially flying over the campsite.

Impale grazing just across the channel from our campsite.

For much of the time in in the Park we were driving along sandy tracks.


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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After just one evening of rain the sandy tracks were much easier to drive along as the sand was compacted however there were already patches of black mud appearing in some places -during the rainy season these tracks are impassable,