Best of Botswana, Victoria Falls & Cape Town, Winelands….
May 12-24 2010 Trip Report - Page 3
Escorted by: Cindi LaRaia
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 Now for our next adventure, we head to the heart of the Okavango Delta. Little Vumbra Camp in a GORGEOUS setting surrounded by water, with 6 lovely tented camps situated to the north of Mombo in a private reserve in the northern reaches of the Okavango Delta, where they offer both water and land activities. Mokoros (dugout canoes) traverse the flood plain under the guidance of experienced poler’s. Open 4x4 land rovers allow us to get close to the animals and this is where I finally got to see the most beautiful Sable Antelope. This camp offered the most beautiful settings I have ever seen. Since we were in the ‘history making flood in the delta’, our airstrip to the camp went underwater 2 days before. We had to be helicoptered to our camp then take a boat to get there, quite the adventure!
One of the founders of Wilderness Safaris my outstanding ground operator and award winners of the many eco-camps they own in southern Africa; my friend Russel Friedman, helped organize his environmental specialist Kai Collins to do a presentation for us. He was such a fun surprise, a very knowledgeable young guy, 6 months from his Ph.D, he is in charge of the African Wild Dog (Lycaon Pictus) project here in Botswana and the Rhino Tracking project. He stayed with us at Little Vumbra and also our next camp Duma Tau where our focus was on the African Wild Dog, more later!
 Our evening activity was a boat ride through the delta with the lovely papyrus and the setting sun. My goodness such a delight to see Africa with so much water! We saw hippo here and had our lovely sundowners on the water with the glowing papyrus, ahhhh.
The next morning most of us chose to do the Mokoro activity and sit deep in the canoe as our guide poled us through many different looking areas of reed and marsh. He showed us these adorable long reed frogs that somehow sit on a reed, the males have a lovely yellow stripe. My favorite was the painted reed frog, bigger with big eyes and very colorful, they change color as the temperature changes. A very unusual community spider web would line a big area of the reeds, we saw water spiders and fishing spiders; all very Zen, a lovely way to spend the morning.
We went to one of the islands for our mid morn coffee break and wala, fresh leopard tracks, hmmmm this island is not very big, where might this leopard be?
We had snorting hippos here and there, lovely day lilies and larger blue and white night lilies closing, also very feathery white frilly star looking Lillie called a Water Gention. We also saw many types of Kingfishers throughout this delta on our mokors.
For are evening game drive we saw several Waterbuck, a purple heron, 7 Sable, 2 babies, a mommy and various others; a giant Eagle owl, giraffe, zebra, baboon, Tsesebe Antelope (in the Topi Family), and a dazzle of zebra with adorable babies.
 Our morning game drive was a true adventure, our boat motor kept dying out, to get to our land rover, then we got a flat tire. Finally on our way; we see more Tsesebe, reed buck, a journey of Giraffe, a herd of Elephant, then a BEAUTIFUL young male Leopard hiding in the bush stalking a herd of Impala. He made his move across the road hunched down crawling on his belly then ran up the tree, and was watching them from high up. Now we had to hurry back to camp as we had to get helicoptered out again, well since it was so wet everywhere…… we got stuck. And boy did we get stuck, deep in the mud and brush. Our guide gathered branches from all over and had to jack up each tire several times to get branches under, we all got out and I found some big Giraffe bones that helped to get us out from the bog.
We rushed like mad to pack and get to where he heli was to fetch us, only to find out she had to get a spare part and was 2hrs late. TIA (This Is Africa)!
Finally we make it to our next camp in the Linyanti called DumaTau, a 10 roomed tented camp in the private Linyanti Wildlife reserve bordering the Chobe Nat Park in northern Botswana. Camp is built on raised boardwalks, overlooking a large hippo-filled lagoon. The source of the Savuti Channel is close to camp, with game drives along the Savute is one of the highlights. The tented rooms are spacious offering ensuite bathrooms and outside showers.
 We finally get to our camp with the delays and we had herds and herds of edgy Elephant, trumpeting and mock charge and flapping of ears all the way to camp. Sheesh what is with these Ele’s? Come to find out they may have come down from the Caprivi where there are many villages. So they were not as calm as we have been used to. We saw a giant bull Hippo already out of the water feeding as the evenings are getting cool and they can come out of the water sooner, he was a very big boy. We had sundowners at the swamp, and our first sighting of the heaviest bird in Africa, a Kori Bustard.
I danced with the local Botswana staff at the Boma, and had a ball!
Our morning game drive started with an open billed stork, a pod of hippos, lilac breasted rollers (oh so pretty) along the Savuti Channel, amazing as 12 years earlier I drove in the dry river bed called the Savuti Channel. Now for our next wild adventure, we heard from the other land rover there were 2 cheetah brothers and we went like mad off road through 6ft high herringbone grass and Mopane bush mowing them all down. Went clear over them and I was in the front next to the guide I looked like a scare crow with all the stuffing coming out! We found them, or rather our Guide did, they were so cute playing and licking each other, very affectionate and loving. They would then sit up with ears perked up hearing something close by they could eat. Always amazing to watch the predators tune in to a possible stalking hunt.
We stopped for our coffee break and Steve packed us the African Liqueur called Amarula, made from the Marula fruit, it is sooooo good in coffee and he added some Kaluha also, well that was a very fun morning game drive to say the least ;-}}! We saw a lot of hippo out of the water feeding in this area, pretty amazing how big they are and how pink!
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