Botswana Botswana Daniel’s route 2024: Is dry season a better time?

[Alex The Lion]

11 hours ago, xelas said:

They are not great but good yes. And more followed.

 

I think the Moremi part of your safari has been adversely affected by the lack of water. 

 

A lot of the game is gathering along the Gomoti and more in Southern Moremi, which are off the traditional self drive routes and not very well sign posted.

Edited October 2 by Alex The Lion

[xelas]

1 hour ago, Alex The Lion said:

which are off the traditional self drive routes and not very well sign posted.

Probably true, as despite using both T4A on Garmin and maps.me navigating through Moremi was quite difficult. 

[Alex The Lion]

1 hour ago, xelas said:

Probably true, as despite using both T4A on Garmin and maps.me navigating through Moremi was quite difficult. 

 

I'm surprised you guys didn't head to Dead Tree Island 

[Peter Connan]

That carcass is no hippo.

Think bigger. Much bigger! Good to see the tusks were still there. At least it died of "natural causes".

 

I don't care about the Lions but you saw some really nice birds at least.

[xelas]

7 hours ago, Peter Connan said:

I don't care about the Lions but you saw some really nice birds at least.

Birding was surprisingly good. Not that many small birds but still enough to keep me and my camera busy 😀

[DanielBme]

Well, I thought I'd pop in and say hi. I was Alex's partner on this trip. I'm surprised he even has photos to share. I'm still sifting through my photos but doing so very slowly.  I basically do a maybe 3 or 4 a night if that.  It may be awhile until I can post some photos.  After sitting on a computer at work all day, it takes an effort to go to my home computer and processing photos.

 

I visited Botswana 11 years ago beginning of Aug and have been wanting to revisit for quite some time. Those beautiful red sunsets always were sitting in the back of my mind. Thankfully, Alex had nothing better to do and thought driving around in dust and taking photos of wildlife would make for a good trip :)..While it was somewhat dry 11 years ago, it doesn't even come close to how dry it was this time around. I was quite shocked and a little disappointed. But this is the chance you take when booking a year out.  I have mixed feelings about this trip to be honest. By the end, I felt like I'm getting too old for these types of trips. It's just a lot of work. But, in looking at the trip I can see where the problem for me lies.  One is the roof top tents. I'm definitely not a fan. Having to put them up and down each day and getting covered in dust while doing so is no fun. Obviously there are pop up roof top tents but Alex and I required our own and sharing was not an option. I wasn't aware of any double pop up roof top tents...well until I saw one on our trip.

 

The other issue is the nonsensical fridge/freezer that Bushlore provides. A 40ltr fridge is not enough for 16 days of travel for two people. We basically only used it to freeze our meat. So what to do with fruits, veggies, milk etc. Well, we rented a cooler box. A lot of good that did. With temps so high, ice melted before we got to the end of the day. Minimum they should provide an 80ltr fridge.

 

In terms of scenery and wildlife, again I have mixed feelings. I hadn't done 3rd bridge and Magotho last time I visited. I had read up on these locations and had high expectations. I don't think they quite lived up to what I heard. Now a large part of that could very well be how dry everything was. The campsite themselves and washrooms/showers were all well taken care of.  Camp staff were generally very nice and helpful. But, wildlife was sparser than I expected. I definitely was expecting more from Magotho and also found it pretty busy.  Lots of campsites popping up all over. Even in places where technically there's no campsite...like we were initially given.  Still had some good sightings though.

 

Someone mentioned Dead Tree Island. We did visit it. Previously to leaving for the trip, I had bookmarked a whole bunch of locations in Garmin's Basecamp and exported them so Alex could load them up into his Garmin GPS.  

 

I agree with Alex, the mokoro ride isn't all that great. Very limited viewing. Last time I visited I did a sun downer motorboat from Khwai which was fantastic. Don't remember where exactly.  Thought I would try something different this time around. It was a nice relaxing 2hrs...a nice break from the driving. Just don't expect to see much.  I shoud say it was relaxing when our guide wasn't crashing into every bush and then had to be swapped out with the lead guide...must have been a newbie. 

 

That cute Hyena at 3rd Bridge, scared the life out of me. I was cooking if I recall and turned around and there he was. At some point he even tried to get up on the Veranda.  I wasn't sure what to do. Yell at him, throw rocks or get up into the tented room. Never had one that close. Ellies up close I can handle...more on that coming up from Alex

 

I too noticed the tail on the leopard looked like something took a good bite out of it while going through my photos.  I just wish we rounded that corner 15 seconds earlier to get a better pic. It's amazing how seconds can become so important on a trip like this. Maybe 30 seconds earlier or 10 seconds later, we would have driven right by and not seen anything.

 

I'll leave it at that for now and let Alex continue.

 

 

[xelas]

Alex will continue, but due to some unexpected and unforseen technical issues it will took a week or two (or three) before this will happen. But I will be back, so stay tuned! 
 

 

[mopsy]

Really enjoying the report @xelaslooking forward to more!