“Over there, two lions are doing what lions do best. Snooze,” said our guide, pointing to a lioness sprawled beneath a Kalahari apple leaf tree. Eyes closed, legs spread, tail moving back and forth. Near her, the cubs were lazily handcuffing each other. As I grabbed my camera, the words “totally adorable” came to mind, until a few feet away I saw a baby giraffe, also stretched out on its side, but with two more lions hungrily gnawing on its ribs.
It was typical of the specific excitement you experience in the Botswana bush in November. It’s the season when many herbivores produce their young, and the carnivores know it. A great opportunity to see the baby animals at their most captivating, as long as you realize that a fair number of them will end up on the wrong end of a murder.
November is also one of the quietest times of the year when it comes to tourism. Our summer is winter in sub-equatorial Africa and is the busiest for safaris. It is the dry season, when the animals tend to congregate around the shrinking waterholes and are therefore easier to spot, and it coincides with the peak holiday season for families. Spring is in the air in September and October, with temperatures and humidity beginning to rise as the more unpredictable rainy season approaches. And so November is normally the time when the safari camps take a breather and prepare for a quieter period before the Christmas rush.
However, spring in Botswana is also a magical period when the bush transitions from the parched, dusty winter months to the lush fecundity of summer, glowing green as the leaves of the mopane trees begin to unfurl and give the spectacular flamboyant tree a bright touch. adds. red splash in the landscape. Exotic flowers, crimson fireball lilies, white bauhinia, aromatic wild honeysuckle, bright purple jacaranda and delicate yellow frangipani bloom around the camps – and the jeep tracks are scented with the sharp scent of wild sage.
And it’s not just about the flowers and animals. Because it is spring, the birds are also the most active. I saw many summer migrants, including the crimson bee-eaters, with their spectacular colors and strikingly long tail feathers, as well as the resident weaverbirds perfecting their exquisitely crafted communal nests on the branches of acacia trees.
Egyptian geese, great white pelicans, blue-helmeted guinea fowl and the comical long-necked African darter strolled along the water’s edge, and from time to time I caught the emerald flash of a Burchell’s starling or the luminous blue of a wood kingfisher in flight. My forays into the bush resounded with the tinkling call of the blacksmith’s lapwings and the “cluck-cluck” of the copper-tailed cuckoos – and there wasn’t much peace at night either, a cacophony of courting crickets and mating bull frogs echoing around the swampy reed fields.
Even the bush floor was full of activity. Besides the drama of spotting big animals, some of my most fascinating moments were spent watching dung beetles squeezing their giant dung balls into shape before rolling them through hordes of tiny, wandering red velvet mites, and past sleepy leopard tortoises came out of their hibernation. , in an attempt to impress a potential partner.
My plan was to explore this fertile and fertile season in the Okavango Delta region of northwestern Botswana from some of the most remote bases, namely Selinda Camp, Duba Plains Camp and the recently opened Sitatunga Private Island, all stylishly comfortable eco- camps – part of Great Plains Conservation – spread across some of the richest habitats for elephants, lions, hippos, leopards and Cape buffalo.
Each camp offered different types of rides and sights, but the sense of drama and excitement was the same for everyone. From the hyena, lurking in its den, waiting for an unsuspecting antelope calf to break away from its mother, to the unblinking eye of a crocodile lying like a tree trunk in the shallows in search of prey. And from a jackal patiently waiting its turn to feast on a rotting carcass to an eagle flying low in search of unsuspecting rodents. The most exciting part was seeing a leopard almost completely camouflaged as it quietly blended into the tall grass.
But by far my most hair-raising encounter were the vultures, who began to gather next to our jeep and get as close as they dared to the lioness and her cubs. They watched just as quietly, still and intently as the lions feasted on the baby giraffe, but with lunch instead of photography on their minds.
How to explore Botswana
By Jeep
The remote and beautiful Selinda Spillway is a water channel that connects the northern Okavango Delta to the Linyanti and Chobe rivers, teeming with wildlife. Within a few minutes’ drive from Selinda Camp we saw groups of sun hippos wallowing in the shallow water, while bull elephants, mothers and calves as young as two or three weeks of age paddled along the water’s edge.
In the scrubby grassland, impala antelopes grazed alongside their long-legged, bambi-eyed offspring, while the horned tsessebe, one of the fastest animals in the bush, stayed close to their lanky, sand-colored young. Troops of baboons and vervet monkeys roamed the bushy plain with babies clutched tightly to their chests and warthog piglets frolicked around their bristly and tusked mothers who, while far from conventional beauties themselves, certainly produced some of the most adorable and captivating offspring I saw. with their blunt snouts and folding back ears.
By helicopter
A ten-minute flight in a small four-seater helicopter from Duba Plains proved an excellent way to get a sense of the region’s sheer size, a sense of space that you can’t fully appreciate on land. And from above it also becomes crystal clear why the area is described as a panhandle, as the Okavango River flows into the region from the distant highlands of Angola before branching into long tendrils, which flow in a pan shape across the land. .
The swampy green landscape was criss-crossed with hippo trails, glittering like snail trails, and we flew low over elephants as they plodded along their well-trodden routes, past white termite mounds so large they were visible from the air. One of the most astonishing moments was diving over a herd of Cape buffalo, close enough to make out their dark bulk and formidable curved horns.
On foot
A 40-minute boat ride along the Okavango from Sitatunga, whose banks are lined with papyrus and reed fields, took us to a disembarkation point on a small island, where we followed our guide quietly and single file past sausage trees, feverberry orchards and outcrops of elephant palm .
Our guide pointed out the ancient baobab trees and clumps of milkweed, home to fluttering African monarch butterflies, and showed us how to identify hippo and antelope tracks in the sand. He also explained how elephant dung contained berries that would be rich harvests for baboons while hyena dung, tinged white from scavenged bones, created calcium-rich food for turtles. There were samples of puff adders in the dust and he showed us holes in the riverbank where water monitor lizards lived.
Essentials
Cazenove+loyd (020 7384 2332; cazloyd.com) offers tailor-made trips to Botswana, with six-night stays at Selinda Camp, Duba Plains Camp and Sitatunga Private Island (two nights in each camp) from £9,860 all-inclusive. with private transfers, on a two sharing basis. A two-night add-on at Mpala Jena Camp in Zimbabwe (for Victoria Falls) starts at £2,200. You can fly from London to Johannesburg or Cape Town on British Airways (ba.com) from £714 return.