Review about Botswana by lopaisate
I would, and have, tell anyone and everyone to go to Botswana. I loved it there and would go back in a heartbeat.
ES
65+ years of age
Amazing even in winter
We are a family of travelers (as a family we've been to 29 countries on 5 continents together and our daughter is only 8!) and have seen much of the world but Moremi Game Reserve absolutely blew us away. We spent several days in the park during our trip to Africa for the FIFA World Cup and saw everything from bull elephants (one which walked right in front of our tent!), to hippos, to two male lions who put on quite the show for us. We had tracked them for about 45 minutes but when we finally found them we were able to just sit and soak in their presence for over an hour. We saw them two other times that day and discovered that lions are very lazy most of the time :) My daughter fell in love with the wandering flocks of guinea fowl while I was over the moon about getting to see several giraffes. We even had a hyena make a visit to our campsite. The animals were absolutely everywhere and there was always an opportunity to watch nature in action. In the evenings, when all the creatures were sleeping, the space geek in me was mesmerized by the amazing skywatching opportunities as it was crystal clear and, thanks to there being no ambient light for miles, you could see what seemed like a thousand times more stars that what you can see being in the suburbs of America. I felt like I could see whole galaxies at night. We loved the fact that even though the campsite was a game reserve designated one and cleared of brush it still felt like the bush and not like a campsite. Definitely spend the extra money to have a licensed guide take you into the reserve overnight as opposed to staying in the public campgrounds. It is so worth it.
Review about Chobe National Park by lopaisate
The river cruise was amazing as was the sunrise safari. We saw so many beautiful birds and were lucky enough to witness a grouping of three leopards. The campsite was clean and was a welcomed respite after a week in the bush.
Review about Mokolodi Nature Reserve by lopaisate
We saw some beautiful Eylops owls here and got up close (well as close as you can get while being safe) with an elephant.
Review about Makgadikgadi Pans National Park by lopaisate
It was winter so that may have impacted the "beauty" a little but getting to see the nesting vulture community was awesome. The way out was very bumpy but it's the bush of Africa and I wouldn't expect, nor want, anything else.
20-35 years of age
German beer, sandy scenes, blue skies
Our first night in Namibia was spent in the coolest campsite in Ngepi. OK, it had a swimming cage, so you didn’t get eaten by Hippos or crocs but the bathrooms were something else. All individually designed and to a theme – such as a throne that overlooks the river – very bizarre. From there,we headed straight to Etosha National Park. We spent three nights here in a couple of different (very comfortable) campsites – actually they were really resorts with campsites tagged onto them. Etosha is a lovely place, with loads of different wildlife. We were there though just after some heavy rain so the animals didn’t need to venture to the waterholes as they could get water elsewhere – The National Park had made a number of waterholes, with each resort having its own next to a viewing platform. On the last day in the park we decided to get up early and sit at the waterhole for a couple of hours. There wasn’t loads of activity compared to what we had been used to but it was really interesting to spend a decent amount of time watching the animals interacting – their social characteristics etc. I also managed to get a really good photo of a pair of young kudu interlocking horns, but unfortunately we have since lost the camera and Gem had gone back to bed so cannot verify that!!
The next morning we got up early (again) to make our way to Swakopmund, stopping off at cape cross to see a seal colony – thousands upon thousands of very smelly seals on a rock. Increasingly the terrain looked more desert-like as we approached Swakopmund. Now this town is very odd. It is a kind of german-themed seaside resort, at the end of the desert. Namibia is a former German colony (or at least West Africa was) so it is still populated by German holiday makers, german speaking black-africans, beer-halls and bakeries.
We left Swokopmund (reluctantly got on the truck as it was nice to have a few days ‘off’) early and had a long days driving through the Namib desert – we stopped for lunch at a funny little place called Solitaire. It was in the middle of absolutely nowhere and it looked like a town from the wild west – we had lovely apple pie there though!
Later in the afternoon we met a guide who took us (in the back of the smallest pick up in the world) to the dunes. We walked to Deadvlei which was the ‘dead’ part of the dunes that the river no longer flowed to. It was amazing and quite eerie (especially with the rain coming in). The guide was hilarious and kept on giving us lectures on how to be good wives! He was a good dancer though!
20-35 years of age
Big beasts, big leaves, big spices
Day one of our trek proper and we were picked up early by our guide (Beerman), who was going to be our driver and tracker for the next three days. We also had our first experience with “African Time” – tell the chef you need breakfast early because you are leaving at 7.30 – “no problems, we will be ready at 7″, only for it to arrive at 8.15 (it was only fruit and muesli!!!)
Anyway, we still didn’t really know what to expect – so we met with our guide for the three day safari (Beerman) and rode off towards the Serengeti National Park. The drive up took about 5 hours and we first had to go through the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation area (Ngorongoro means “cowbell” in Masai because apparently that is what the word sounds like.) We didn’t go into the crater on the first day, instead we drove around the rim and down into the plains of the Serengeti. First of all we were so excited to see anything we stopped to take pictures of whatever we saw, no matter how far away they were. But once we got down onto the vast plain, there were no shortage of things to look at – especially wildebeest, impala and zebra, which are in total abundance.
Approaching dusk, we pulled into our campsite for the night – not exactly completely in the bush (there was at least a toilet (long drop, not very pleasant) but there was no fences and nothing to stop the animals coming in…
Beerman and some others from the safari company cooked us dinner and we were a little disconcerted that they slept in the caged off area that served as the kitchen while we were out in the open!! We managed not to get eaten alive although everyone (apart from me) heard a pride of Lion killing a buffalo scarily close to our campsite.
And that was just day one!!!Day two in the Serengeti started (after swapping stories of hearing lion in the night – some other group got a little over-excited and claimed that the lion were walking in between our tents!!!) with an early morning game drive – we left about 6.30 so any notion of this being a relaxing holiday soon got abandoned.
It wasn’t looking like being a terribly successful morning – we saw a herd of elephant in the distance, a water buck and some interesting birds (as well as the ever present impala and a few buffalo).
Then possibly the highlight of our tour thus far; going back through the main plains of the serengeti we spotted a cheetah in the distance. There were three about two hundred metres to our left and we watched them walking for about 10 minutes. Then, when we thought they were just going to wander off, they suddenly changed direction and headed towards the road. It turns out that they had spotted an Impala standing on a termite mound 300 metres to the right of our road. We watched them, a mother and two young, cross the road right in front of us and then slowly approach and stalk the impala right up until the final chase. The kill happened just over the brow of the hill so we did not see that (and neither impala or cheetah were seen again so we new they had made the kill) but that didn’t stop it being an amazing site!!!
That night we camped on the crater rim, which was alot colder than we had been used to. Also the campsite (another bush camp) was also occupied by an old (and grumpy) buffalo who grazed the site during the night and chased anybody who dared to go to the loo.
Surviving the night on the Crater rim with the not-so-friendly buffalo, day three of our Serengeti excursion started early again (6am) and straight after breakfast we descended through the mist into the crater itself, a massive caldera. David Attenborough could possibly tell you why but there is but there is an unbelievably amount of animals in the one location. Unlike the plains of the Serengeti, these animals do not migrate so there is always alot to see. The first thing we say as soon as we reached the bottom was this massive bull elephant. We had a distant view of a black Rhine, saw some Zebra giving themselves a sandbath and then spotted the aftermath of a lion kill. The Hyena were fighting over the carcass.
20-35 years of age
Review about Etosha National Park by gem and stu
A lovely destination. The only reason that bush vibe is marked down is because it was one of the few times we stayed in an up-market resort
20-35 years of age
Review about Serengeti National Park by gem and stu
Not quite as good as the crater but still amazing