The BTa14 Botswana Wild Parks tour is packed with opportunities to view wildlife in different areas of Botswana. Khama Rhino Sanctuary, Okavango Delta, Moremi Game Reserve and Khwai Concession, the Nata Bird Sanctuary and finally the Chobe National Park are all places where we spend time to see animals. Apart from those places we have chances of seeing animals while driving from one place to the next as wildlife is mostly roaming free in Botswana. This tour offers a very good chance of spotting the Big 5 and with some luck you might even see the endangered Painted Dog or African Wild Dog as they call it.

On this last tour I (Steff) did with Phumi it seemed as if the animal were finding us instead! Especially Moremi Game Reserve and the Khwai Concession were rewarding and on the second day in the parks, we ended the full day game drive with a stunning leopard and two wild dog sightings, honey badger, loads of elephants and hippos and other general game. But where was this other cat? We still had time to find that one but as a group we decided to not name it as to not jinx our luck!! But it seemed as if they knew we were on to them and they disappeared completely. Not a single game drive vehicle managed to see that one big hairy animal. We tried again in the afternoon for a lovely 2 hours sunset drive with the golden light so beautiful, every animal had to be photographed anew because it just looked that much more spectacular with the sun setting!! And with that time was going and our chances dwindling. The next morning we started early to really make good use of the crisp cool morning hours and we were rewarded!! Not with the one that everyone was desperate for but with the other one that was just as beautiful and that much harder to come across! A wonderful leopard that was posing so nicely for us and showing us her impressive canines … How lucky were we to see such a stunning cat twice in four days? The other one just had to wait!

The natural death of a young elephant bull along the banks of the Chobe river was to be the reason for our clients to get super lucky. Three lionesses and four cubs and a looooot of meat that would last them for days. Now the clients were really happy! Finally they had their Big 5 list complete! And what a sighting this was! No scavenger was in sight except the feathered ones and they really gave this one female a tough time. She wanted to go lie in the shade with her sisters but the second she would turn her back on the elephant carcass, the marabou storks and vultures would move in. She would then turn around and chase the birds away, giving us quite the spectacle to witness. This happened repeatedly and the hotter it got, the more reluctant she was to waste energy. She was extremely full but everytime she was back at the carcass, she would take another bite. At one stage she even jumped on top of the elephant to show who’s boss!

We then witnessed a completely different scene on the afternoon boat cruise on the Chobe. There was another elephant bull carcass but lying on Sedudu island, a place where the predators except crocodiles won’t go due to the river flowing around it. Sedudu Island is surrounded by two channels of the Chobe river and is a safe haven for buffalos, elephants and antelopes like waterbuck and lechwe when the water levels are down. The grass is green and soft and there isn’t much danger around except for the nile crocodile. When an animal dies on the island, it is entirely for the crocodiles, vultures and marabous to finish it. It was no surprise to find the amount of crocodiles we did surrounding the elephant carcass, one of which was actively trying to rip out chunks of meat. It was absolutely amazing to watch but also not so easy to stomach because of the stench that was surrounding us.