Okavango: the best game drive of our lives

By Roxanne Reid
The signs were there from the start. We flew over ribbons of water where game paths criss-crossed the floodplain between islands of trees. Dry channels snaked through the veld and we spotted herds of elephant, buffalo and giraffe. When we arrived at camp an elephant was chomping on a tree next to the main deck. Here in Botswana’s Okavango Delta we were about to have the best game drive of our lives.

​We were staying at Chitabe Lediba Camp in a 22 000-hectare concession of Okavango wilderness bordering the Moremi Game Reserve. The scenery changed often, from mixed woodland to open floodplains with palm trees, then drier woodland with camel thorn trees. Guide Phinley Mwampole told us that the variety of habitats meant there was a diversity of species from red lechwe, impala and elephant to lion, leopard, spotted hyena and wild dog. We grinned; that sounded promising.

​Our tent on a raised wooden deck was enormous, though using the term ‘tent’ for such luxury seems misleading. There were carpets and a writing desk, framed pictures on the canvas walls and a king-size bed with oodles of space on either side.

​The bathroom was big too, with twin basins – always a treat when we’re both in a hurry to get out on an early morning game drive. There was an indoor shower and, for the more adventurous, a simple open-air shower under some large fever-berry and African ebony trees. ​

​From our deck we looked out over floodplains towards a stand of mokolane palms. Best of all in this unfenced camp in the wilderness was that African fish-eagles, warthogs, tree squirrels and a large-spotted genet came to visit.

A delight of trees
On our first afternoon game drive we went north through tall blond turpentine grass. We saw giraffe, zebra and a clutch of kudu with a big bull that stood and watched us, his nose and ears twitching. We drove through mixed woodland of large fever-berry, ebony, sicklebush and magic guarrie trees, and learnt that ostriches are partial to the wild jasmine creeper we saw spreading along the ground.

We don’t have a Big-Five-or-die way of thinking. We were thrilled to be learning about grasses and trees, including some dead leadwoods that dotted the landscape, their dry arms reaching into the sky. ‘They don’t have a long tap root to get water in dry times,’ Phinley told us, ‘so they died long ago from lack of water. And too much salt because the salts get concentrated when there’s less water. They will still last for a very long time because they are termite resistant.’ ​

Then we stopped beside a dead log near the track and all interest in trees evaporated faster than a water droplet in the Kalahari. Because there, squished into a fork in a bush next to the log, were two leopard cubs.

​Leopard cubs
They were just two months old, their eyes still grey-blue, their fur fluffy. Phinley told us they were a brother and sister. ‘Their mother has gone out hunting and left them here because they’re too small to take with her. She left this morning to hunt in an area where there are lions and spotted hyenas.’

So they’d been alone all day, no milk, just waiting for mom to have a meal and come back to nurse them. We watched them cuddle and play fight, bite each other’s ears and tails, rough-house and tumble among the branches near their den in a hollow of the fallen log.

Mesmerised, we told Phinley we had no need to find anything else that afternoon. So the three of us sat and watched them play for about two and a half hours, the day cooling around us and turning to night.

Sister was slightly smaller and lighter in colour than her brother. At first she was very active, jumping and biting and sitting on top of him. He seemed tired, his eyelids drooping as he tried to sleep wedged half upside down in the fork of a branch near the ground.

Eventually she got fed up. Pestering him with little comeback wasn’t much fun so she went off on an adventure of her own, exploring the fallen log and climbing into little gaps between branches, testing her claws on a vertical branch but wisely deciding not to climb it.

Then brother got a new burst of energy and came to find her for another bout of wrestling, but by then she’d exhausted herself. Now she was the one that didn’t reciprocate, just tolerated his teasing as he’d earlier put up with hers. The sun was setting behind them, rim lighting her head and ears.

And then it was dark and Phinley decided to leave them to crawl back into their secret hiding place to stay safe while they waited for mom.

On the drive back to camp we saw giraffe, tsessebe, three old buffalo bulls and some zebra, but they all passed in a dream. Nothing could compare to the thrill of seeing those leopard cubs.

About four years ago we watched a mom and two leopard cubs of about six months old for a few minutes in Etosha National Park in Namibia, and we considered it to be the best sighting of our lives. Here at Chitabe Lediba in the Okavango, we’d outdone that by a million miles.

Note: I was a guest of Wilderness Safaris for two nights, but the opinions are mine.

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