Chasing Elephants in the Okavango

After two relaxing but sweltering days at Kubu Island we packed Henry up and headed back north towards Nata to replenish stocks then carry on up to the Elephant Sands campsite. This campsite seemed to be quite well known amongst the Overlanding community – everyone says there are elephants everywhere and it´s amazing.

Given its reputation we had been very pleasantly surprised at how reasonable the cost of their camping was and arrived very excited that we had been able to book two nights at relatively short notice.

The reception area was interesting

Our first chore was to fill up our water containers as we were running low. The sinks were surrounded by walls with electric fences above and long spikes around the floor – hard core measures to dissuade water-loving elephants from breaking in. The spikes made walking in and out quite tricky as there was no obvious path through and as I teetered out of the narrow gap in the wall carrying a 20L container full of water in one hand I wobbled and instinctively put my other hand out to the wall to steady myself. Sadly I just missed the wall and caught the electric wire – a current running up your arm that is designed to keep elephants out is an interesting experience!

Having found a pitch and settled in we headed off to the restaurant area, cameras in hand, to go and see what was around.

The answer was, a lot!

For those of you that aren´t familiar with African elephants, let me just say that they do not live up to their friendly, Nellie-the Elephant, image. In fact they are some of the most dangerous animals around – personally I would prefer my chances of survival coming face to face with an angry lion than an angry elephant. In general they are not aggressive just for the sake of it but come too close to a female herd with young or a male in Must and you had better get out of there pretty fast. If you get on their wrong side they are very big, very fast and perfectly willing and able to literally pound you – and your Landrover – into the dust until there is nothing left.

We spend a lot of time in national parks being careful to keep our distance from elephants so being this close to this many – and on foot! – was very disconcerting

But also incredible

These animals are not domesticated, tame or even habituated. They are, however, used to people being around their waterhole and no harm has ever come to them here. They are, therefore, very tolerant of remarkably close contact. And of course it is their decision to come here knowing people will be around rather than being surprised by someone´s sudden appearance in their domain. The small electric fence between them and us was helpful but they could have trampled that down, or even leant over it and swiped you with their tusks if they wanted to.

But they didn´t want to

Some were very curious

Making my heart pump for a few moments

But generally speaking they just wanted to have a drink and a chat with their friends and family

Back at the campsite later on we realised just how special this place is. Forget electric fencing between us and the elephants at the water hole itself, they were heading there in droves straight through the campsite and right past all the campers with no barriers anywhere

At one point I was inside Henry talking to James through the roof window as he was outside packing some tools into the drawer on the side. My eyes rose up from his face to see a huge elephant coming straight towards him from behind. I stumbled my words out pointing and suggesting he turned around but by the time he realised what I was saying the elephant had passed by without blinking and carried on to the water.

That night, as we sat round our fire, every so often we would see a dark shape loom nearby and have to smile to ourselves as the elephant world went about its business around us

The next day we had lunch up at the restaurant to spend more time with the elephants.

We met the owner of the lodge and chatted to him for a while. He said that in 10 years or more no elephants here had caused problems with tourists but tourists had frequently caused trouble for the elephants – deliberately standing in front of them as they walked through the campsite and being unceremoniously swiped aside! Why would you play chicken with an elephant??

A Banded Mongoose suddenly appeared from behind the bar and wiggled straight up to him. He bent down and picked it up, gave it a cuddle and let it sit on his arm

I smiled at the two of them – ´a pet I´m guessing´ I said. Yes, rescued a few years ago and never wanted to leave. The mongoose was gently put back on the floor but he just wanted more fuss from anyone who would give it to him…and James was happy to oblige!

We booked a game drive around the local conservancy that afternoon. It was a nice and relaxing couple of hours with beautiful views

And with a few animals to see

Including our first Buffalo since we arrived in Africa nearly 18 months ago

I was quite happy not to have seen buffalo up to now, they are the only animal I am actually scared of. Bad tempered, fast and strong and if they want you they never give up trying.

And at the end of the day they are just cows with silly haircuts!

So when our lone male became a large herd we made a quick getaway!

As we made our way back to camp the sun set behind us and we were treated to a magnificent African sky

That evening we had booked dinner at the restaurant so that we could experience eating with the elephants. The food was great

But the elephants were spectacular

Our next stop was Maun, the major tourist town in Botswana where most safaris are booked and most operators base themselves. This was a two-day stopover to fill up with supplies and pay the remaining operators for our Moremi and Chobe campsites. We found everyone relatively easily, swapped fistfuls of cash for camping vouchers with no drama, stocked up with as much food, fuel and water as we could carry and were soon heading out of town into the northern regions of Botswana and the Okavango Delta. Expectations were high, this is the part of Botswana that gives the country its reputation.

We arrived at Moremi National Park over long, straight, corrugated roads to find we had the entire Southgate campsite to ourselves. We had a late lunch watching tree squirrels gradually getting closer and closer until they were brave enough to run off with the fallen grapes by our feet. Then we headed off into the Park for our first Moremi game drive.

It started well, we found hippos in a waterhole

And a lone buffalo crossing the trail in front of us

But after that the trails got very overgrown and there was nothing to see

Slightly disappointed we headed back to our campsite for dinner and an early night

The next day we were up at 5:30am and driving out of our campsite by 6:30am, ready and excited to find lions, leopards or whatever else might be around at this time of day.

The answer was nothing! In fact Henry was getting scratched in the dense bush yet again and our hearts were sinking. So we cut our losses and decided to give up on the game drive and head further north towards our next campsite – Third Bridge.

Moremi has four named bridges and they are all a bit wobbly. In fact crossing the rickety bridges here is all part of the fun…

The campsite at Third Bridge is in the heart of the national park. We remembered enjoying the whole place last time we were here so had our fingers crossed we would eventually find the landscapes we had loved so much.

And finally, after an hour or more of driving, we passed through the gate at Third Bridge

And the Moremi we remembered appeared in front of our eyes. The dense bush cleared and the plains spread out in front of us

True to its name, the Okavango Delta showed its beauty with water everywhere

And with it, animals!

We were thrilled.

We drove aimlessly around the Park following our noses through trails sometimes dusty, sometimes grassy and sometimes rocky. And sometimes barely there at all!

We approached a waterhole surrounded by elephants. It was a large herd with a lot of babies. The trail we were following initially appeared to turn away from them but at the last minute changed direction and headed straight for the waterhole. We slowed down and eventually stopped with the herd still some distance away. To get further into the Park we had to go past but the trail went very close and they were already watching us carefully

´Let´s just drive past as quickly as we can and see what happens´ I suggested. The track was soft sand making speed quite difficult so James put Henry into 1st gear and we set off. As we neared the herd one or two of the adults turned towards us and eyed our approach warily. They started flapping their ears in irritation. One in particular was very close to the trail and as we drove towards her she flapped her ears wildly and stomped her feet. We carried on, having no choice but to follow the trail heading towards her. Eventually she had had enough and with a loud trumpet and a pounding of feet she came for us! Trunk and ears angrily shaking. Henry was dragging in deep sand but James quickly changed gear, put his foot on the throttle and spun the steering wheel off the trail away from the angry elephant. We shot past and veered away from her just at the last minute, watching her shaking her head and stamping her feet into the ground as she disappeared into our rear view mirror.

We were slightly shaken but laughing, at least we had been out in the open where we could make a quick getaway….this time!

We carried on our drive aiming for nowhere in particular and came across an adorable money playing in the trees

After a while we saw a group of tourists at a mobile camp with their guide so stopped for a chat. The guide told us we had reached the end of that particular road with the swamps having swallowed the trails ahead. He suggested we headed north to Paradise Pools which he said was beautiful.

So we set our sat nav and headed off. The route there was no problem at all, the bush was getting quite dense again so there were few animals to see but not so dense as to cause us problems. Eventually, after about an hour, we popped out into an absolutely stunning series of pools and plains

We meandered around marvelling at the beauty of it all

And watched male impala fighting over the female herd

But eventually we had to leave to make sure we got back to the campsite before dusk fell. We set the sat nav for Third Bridge and settled back expecting to drive the same road as we had getting there.

No such luck! Our sat nav has a mind of its own and apparently no-one had told it the difference between a main road and an unmaintained seasonal road so it decided the best way to get back to our campsite was in the straightest line possible and that meant directly through the swamp.

We didn´t realise at first, the trails in Moremi are winding and often difficult so nothing rang alarm bells. But after about half an hour it seemed that every turn we made took us into more and more remote and soggy tracks. It was clear that no-one had been down here for a very long time and eventually we stopped and looked around, realising too late that every path was worse than the last and there was no way through.

We had no idea where we were! The swamp was all around us and everywhere looked the same.

Fortunately we had bought a glossy map of the Park from Maun which had hundreds of GPS coordinates scattered all over it. I checked our sat nav to see what our GPS position was and when I cross-referenced it to the map my heart sank into my toes. I groaned….we were deep in the swamp with no obvious way out.

I chose a GPS position from the map that was on the main road as close to us as I thought I could get. The sat nav plotted a route and declared it was 10km away. No good, try again…this one was 6km away…the next 4km. That was about as good as we could get so, with nerves in tatters, we started off.

It was 4km of overgrown, narrow, wet trails winding aimlessly around with no clear end to it. Henry was sliding around and sinking down into the mud. About 1km away from our goal the sat nav said to turn right. The right turn was practically non-existent. James exclaimed ´it wants us to go down there?? No way!´.

We zoomed out to check if there wasn´t another way. It appeared not. We studied the map again, looked all around us. Nope – it appeared that we had to go down this tiny little track covered with grass and bush as high as Henry´s bonnet. With an angry and frustrated grunt James turned right and we literally ploughed through. ´We have to stop doing things like this, we really HAVE to stop!´ he muttered.

With breaths held we counted the distance down as we drove along. The trail thinned out, widened a little and eventually, after what seemed like hours, we popped out onto a wide, sandy road. We celebrated for a split second before realising the sat nav had not finished with us yet and whatever milestone we put in to get us closer towards our campsite it tried to take us back into the swamp down the shortest, but most dangerous tracks.

We edged closer, GPS position by GPS position until eventually we reached Fourth Bridge by which time we were far enough from the swamp to trust the sat nav to take us all the way home. By the time we reached the campsite it was long past dusk and we were ready for a beer!

As we sat calming our nerves watching a film on the laptop that evening we heard a heavy rustling sound very close to us. James got up and looked around with the torch. We found large Hippo having his dinner in the bushes right by us

He didn´t seem concerned by our presence but on the basis that more people in Africa are killed by startled Hippos than any other animal we decided to give him some space and climbed into the safety of Henry for an early night.

The next morning I was woken early by lions roaring. They seemed about 1km away in the direction of a wide open plain. So we packed up and headed in that direction, expectations high. We met a guide coming in the other direction. He stopped to tell us there were two male lions walking across the plain with three vehicles tracking them – find the vehicles and you´ll find the lions he said. We drove further on and came across a Hilux who wound their windows down and shouted across to follow them if we were after the lions as their friends were with them. We excitedly followed until we found the three other vehicles. They were coming back off the plain to the main trail and indicated that the lions were heading north towards a herd of zebra.

All of us parked up by the zebra and waited…and waited…and waited. Two vehicles went back to where the lions were last seen but returned shaking their heads. It seemed Botswana was not our lucky place, the lions were gone.

Disappointed, we carried on north to find the river and see whether there were any boat rides heading out that day.

The river was very narrow at this point and the place was deserted. It was beautiful though

We wound our way back to camp having had a lovely day, albeit the lions were a no-show yet again

Another money kept us entertained as we cooked dinner

And, whilst we know better than to deliveberately feed the animals, we could only smile when a piece of bread that had fallen off our table became a prize!

Our neighbourhood Hippo joined us again that evening, closer than before, loudly munching on the grasses and snorting every now and again. So we spent another evening inside listening to the noises of the African savannah and watching the stars through the roof windows.

In the morning we were planning to head out of Moremi and into the Khwai Community Reserve – outside the National Park but with no fences between the two. It is an area renowned for having masses of wildlife. As we were packing up we heard the two male lions roaring again, closer than the day before and on the opposite side of us. It always makes me smile to know lions are so close but I had little expectation of a siting – not least because we had decided not to leave camp until 8:30am by which time all self-respecting lions would be fast asleep hidden in the long grass. And indeed the roars become less and less frequent and had stopped altogether at least an hour before we set off – our furry friends clearly having fallen asleep somewhere for the day.

We drove over Third Bridge heading off on our long drive north east to Khwai. It was to be a full day driving through Moremi aiming to reach Khwai by mid-afternoon.

But we had only just crossed the bridge and come out onto the plains when we saw two vehicles parked up on the side of the road. We looked at each other, could it be?? As we approached we spotted a large, beige lump on the road in front of one of the vehicles and a few meters closer still the lump sat up and yawned, a big, toothy, lion-shaped yawn!

Yaaaay!!! Our first Botswana lion! After all this time!

And a few seconds after the rush of excitement subsided I looked around more closely and spotted his brother lying just a few meters away in the bushes.

Moremi is a relatively quiet national park with far fewer visitors than it´s big brother Chobe and after just five minutes the other two vehicles drove away leaving us with our two lions all to ourselves….

All was finally right with the world and we had a wonderful half an hour watching the lions doing very little

As lions often do!

The rest of the drive through Moremi was much less eventful. The scenery was lovely and at first the trails were fairly easy to navigate.

But the Okavango Delta is a maze of swamps and lakes

And after a while the trails started to get wet and muddy with deep ruts

And wide detours were required around the larger puddles

At one point the sat nav wanted us to go straight on but at the last minute we saw a small sign saying ´strictly dry route only´ and an arrow pointing down a right fork. It didn´t take much debate, after the problems we had had two days earlier trying to navigate the swamps where there were no warnings, we figured it would not end well if we ignored this clear direction.

And if this was the dry route, I hate to think what we would have faced had we followed the sat nav down the wet route!

An hour or so later we came across two Hilux´s parked up on the side of the road with all the occupants milling around on the side of the trail. Given that it is against all the rules to be out of your car in a national park it was clear there was a problem. We pulled over and asked if we could help. It seems they had had a similar sat nav issue to us and been directed straight into the swamps up here but had been unfortunate enough to sink deep and get stuck. A group of six Land Cruisers and Landrovers had found them and kindly offered to pull them out. Sadly the owner of the Land Cruiser who did the towing had mistakenly attached the rope to his lashing point not his towing point, the strain had snapped the metal and the tow rope along with the coupling link had sprung back and hit the Hilux´s radiator making a large hole. They were going nowhere and their friends were trying to tow them back to the nearest gate – which had just taken us nearly 2 hours to drive from. We were concerned for them, especially trying to tow a Hilux over the muddy trails we had just driven but they were clear that they did not need any help. We left them to it but when we passed through the northern gate I told the rangers there what had happened and they set off to find them and check they were ok.

We pressed on and as we turned a corner we were stopped in our tracks by a couple surrounded by a herd of elephants crossing the trail all around them

This is always a difficult situation for any vehicle – do you switch your engine off and wait for the elephants to pass by or do you drive slowly away risking startling them or worse and initiating a charge. Here the terrain was very different to the open plains where we had faced our elephants, neither they – nor now us – could make a quick getaway in this dense bush. The couple had opted for the sit-wait-and-hope option, probably the best course in most circumstances but a tense few minutes hoping the elephants remain relaxed and don’t take offence at your presence.

We sat a few meters away with our engine also switched off so as not to spook the animals and after a while the herd calmly passed by and went on their way. Once the coast was clear we approached the couple and chatted through the window. They were visibly shaken but thrilled by the experience and delighted when we found we all had IPhones so we could Air Drop our photos to them!

It had been a busy day and we arrived at Khwai late in the afternoon to be shown to a lovely camping spot near the river.

As always, the terrain looked very different to the open plains we remembered from our previous visit five years ago with bushes and high grass obstructing most of our view.

But it didn´t matter here, the wildlife came to us!

As James was crouching down lighting the fire an elephant wandered up and started munching on the nearby branches

I signalled to James and made a discreet escape into Henry with James quickly following. The elephant marched straight past the unlit fire about 5 meters away from us and wandered off towards the river

We spent two days here and didn´t move off our campsite except for one short drive along the river where we saw plenty of elephant paddling

But little else

The rest of the time the wildlife came to us. We had more elephant in our campsite

Including one who woke me up in the middle of the night breaking branches and noisily eating his dinner less than 6 meters away from the back window.

A monkey peered at us from a high branch

We had a pile of wood ready for the evening´s fire stacked up at the base of his tree

In with the wood, ready to burn, were a couple of cardboard boxes that used to contain oat breakfast bars. It seems this little monkey may have recognised the packaging and not realised they were empty.

He started to climb down towards them

Bit by bit, hoping we wouldn´t notice

Getting braver and braver!

But just as he reached down to grab a packet James bellowed at him and he ran back up the branches. He sat there for a short while pretending he wasn´t there…

Before doing a couple of stretches

Having a scratch

And evenutually disappearing into the bush.

Every evening we heard Hippo in the bushes surrounding us and at one point we heard Hyaena. Out here you really do feel surrounded by nature and part of something much bigger and more serene than the human world with no fences or barriers between us all.

This is where I had made my one mistake booking the campsites. Google showed Chobe Safari Lodge in the middle of Chobe and Savuti Camp on the northern edge by the Chobe River. In fact the two are the opposite way around. So we were expected at Chobe Safari Lodge the night after leaving Khwai and at Savuti Camp the night after that. That meant an 11 hour drive to the Lodge in one day followed the next day by a 5 hour drive back the way we had come for one night at Savuti and a 5 hour drive back again the next day. It was all a bit of a pain.

We decided to head towards Chobe Safari Lodge anyway and see whether we could talk our way into staying for two nights and giving up our Savuti booking – we´d probably spend more in fuel going backwards and forwards than we would losing the cost of the night at Savuti anyway.

So we set off north into Chobe determined to take it as slowly as we could justify and enjoy the drive, animal spotting on the way. We had only made it as far as the transit road between Khwai and the Chobe entrance gate when we made an amazing find.

At least 12 Wild Dog sitting in the road next to a largely eaten Buffalo – probably killed a couple of days ago by lions

Wild Dogs are very rare although this part of Botswana is where they are most often seen.

As before, whilst there were initially two vehicles with them they both drove off quite quickly and left us alone with the Dogs, one of which – probably the leader – was collared and therefore being studied

They were very frisky!

With most basking in the sun after their large meal but some still finishing off what they could find

After a few minutes the proceedings were disturbed by two large Spotted Hyaena approaching and taking over the kill

There may have been a lot of Wild Dogs but none of them were about to take on two Hyaena with their far superior strength and ferocious biting power

The Hyaena took control and the Wild Dogs sat back and simply enjoyed their morning with full stomachs

We were passing Savuti Camp by around lunch time and looked longingly at it, really not keen on another six hour slog up to Chobe Safari Lodge – we were frustrated by the fact a simple error meant we were risking our few days in Chobe becoming too much of a mission.

On impulse I suggested to James that we pulled into the camp and spoke to them about our problem. I jumped out and went up to reception. I showed them our paperwork with our booking for the following night and explained the error. They were lovely! They said they were fully booked for that night but there was a camping spot which they never book out to guests as there is no shade. She said it was up to us but if we wanted to stay there a night earlier than planned we were welcome to it. With our large awning it makes no difference to us whether a pitch has natural shade or not so we jumped at the chance.

They even let us use their telephone to call Chobe Safari Lodge who were just as accommodating and happily moved our booking back by a day.

We couldn´t have been more pleased or relieved! We set up camp on what turned out to be a lovely pitch, very close to the ablutions block and – to James´delight – equally near to the camp tuck shop where they sold cider and baked beans! Our few days in Chobe had been rescued!

We set off for a game drive around Savuti late that afternoon. The map showed a gallery of Baobab trees which looked interesting so we headed in that direction. The landscape around here was beautiful and there were hundreds of the stately and atmospheric Baobab trees scattered around.

The final leg up to the gallery was a dead end which meant we would have to drive back down the same way to get out. The trail was narrow and dense leaving very little room for manoeuvre and almost no possibility for any sort of speed. We were driving along when all of a sudden we heard a loud crashing and trumpeting sound. We looked over to see an elephant coming straight for us – she really did not want us there. Luckily she was coming from behind us so we could just carry on driving and she quickly gave up the chase but what would we do when we had to come back down the trail?

We soon arrived at the Baobab gallery and took some photos

But our enjoyment was somewhat spoilt by the concern over our elephant encounter. To get back out of here we would have to pass right by her again only this time we would be heading straight for her before we could get past and she would be unlikely to tolerate that. Moreover, unlike when we were charged at the waterhole in Moremi, this time we were completely hemmed in on both sides – if she came for us we would have absolutely nowhere to go, even reversing back down the trail away from her would be useless as we couldn´t reverse anywhere near as fast as she could charge towards us

I had noted the distance on the sat nav between the gallery and the elephant – around 5 km. We slowly and carefully picked our way 4 km down the trail and were then on high alert. We looked in all directions, tense and ready – but ready to do what? We didn´t really have that many options except hope. 1.5km further on we rounded a corner and the first thing we saw was a large elephant running, branches snapping under foot and trees swooshing as she pushed through them.

Our hearts leapt into our mouths, sweat broke out on my brow and we were both shaking. James stamped on the brakes, I said ´back, back, back….´. It took a couple of seconds for the scene to resolve itself in our minds at which point we realised, with more relief than I can describe, that the elephant was running away from us not towards us.

We sat for a moment allowing our hearts to stop pumping then slowly and carefully picked our way forwards. The running elephant had disappeared into the bush and as we looked through to where she had gone we saw a large female herd with some very young babies – no wonder we had been warned off on our way up. By now the main herd had moved further away from the trail and so were less concerned by our presence. The one that was running had probably got left behind and was simly trying to catch up with them when she heard us coming.

But we were taking no chances and sped off as fast as we could until we were safely back on the open plains.

We had spent a long time in Botswana disappointed not to see many animals and then within the last week had been charged by two elephants, forced to spend two evenings inside Henry because of Hippos and spent a happy hour with two sleeping lions lying across the road.

There are no half measures in this dramatic and beautiful country. We still had another week to go and I was beginning to wonder whether my nerves could take it! There is nowhere else in the world which proves the old saying more vividly than here in Africa….be careful what you wish for….!