Wouter on his last ZBa16, a tour that travels through large parts of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana had this to share. My clients had a great experience on a 2-night trip into the most beautiful wetland system of Africa: The Okavango Delta in northern Botswana. I have done this Okavango trip many many times now, but I am still always excited to go as every trip is different and has something unique to offer. You never know what is going to happen, but you always know something spectacular is going to happen. This trip, what I will remember for a very long time, is the many excellent Elephant sightings we had.

July is the middle of the dry season in Southern Africa and Botswana, and during recent years rainfall has been very low in Botswana, so low that you can speak of a serious drought, influencing all the animals who are now struggling to find enough food and water to survive. Luckily, in the Okavango Delta is a permanent swamp meaning that there is always fresh water available. The water comes from the highlands of Angola, where there is a different climate with more rainfall. This is where the Okavango river finds its origin, but in Angola it is called the Cubango river. Water takes between 3 and 6 months to reach the Delta depending on the amount of rainfall, and this permanent water attracts an enormous amount of animals in the dry season, with Elephants in particular.
Already on the way towards our campsite we saw some Elephants from our Mokoro’s (traditional dug-out canoes), then on the afternoon bushwalk we saw some more bulls that we were able to approach on foot. We had to be careful, as they were in thick bush and we couldn’t see if they were in must or not. We just hid behind a small Leadwood Tree and used it as cover. This way we were able to watch the Elephants coming closer without disturbing them in the slightest way.

The next 4 hour morning walk provided my favourite Elephant sighting of the tour. When we almost got back to our camp we found 3 Elephant bulls in the middle of a Lala Palm thicket. These Palm trees grow very nutritious and delicious fruits that look like a small coconut. If you are able to crack them open, there is a softer brown layer around the core that is edible for human beings and tastes quite nice. This is also what the Elephants were after and these Lala Palm fruits attract a lot of them in the dry season. The problem was, however, that these fruits were hanging about ten meters high between the leaves of the Palms, far out of reach for an Elephant. But Elephants are incredibly intelligent creatures, and a lot of their behaviour is learned behaviour which they remember for life. This intelligence is used to overcome problems like here with the Palm trees. We saw one of the Elephants approaching a big Palm tree, and as soon as he reached it, he looked up curiously at the Palm fruits. Then he lifted its head and trunk high into the sky, put its head against the bark of the tree and started shaking! This is when you realise the strength of an Elephant. The whole Palm was shaking like it was a match stick! The dry Palm leaves were shaking and made a very loud noise, and one after another all the delicious fruits fell out of the tree on the ground. The other two Elephants came over and they all started feasting on these nutritious fruits like it was candy.
Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of this as it happened quite fast and I wanted to really observe these Elephants showing this interesting behaviour, but the memory of this experience is something that I will never forget!!

Looking forwards to my next Delta trip and I wonder what will happen then!