Botswana blend: boat, lodges and camping.

[Safaridude]

Some great images as usual Jochen. Your Chobe accommodation is intriguing... I am assuming there are no natural or artificial water near the camp?

[Jochen]

Hey Safaridude,

 

Not sure, because on the border of Zim and Bots (where the camp is - it's only a few kilometer from the border), there's some sort of perennial river flowing towards Chobe river. But I don't know whether it had water or not.

[kittykat23uk]

Elephant Valley Lodge looks great. The animals you saw in Chobe were outstanding...the sable, the lion cubs! It pays to wait awhile as your adorable cub shots show.

 

Your camping part of the trip had some harrowing moments to go along with the short game drive. All adds to the variety, which "blended" together very nicely.

 

 

Back to the boat, I saw @Kittykat's comment: So "...it is probably best to book this as a tailor made thing rather than going on a group tour to get the best out of the location." Question for @Kittykat if she is tuning in (or I can pm). Do you think this boat trip you and Jochen took caters to people who want to see wildlife and have chosen a boat as the means to see it? Or do you think this boat caters to people who want a relaxing cruise and time on the water and the wildlife is a bonus? Jochen, you can chime in too, but since you had the boat to yourself, you might not be able to respond about other guests.

 

Jochen, would you say your boat sightings were better from the main river or from smaller channels?

 

Do you know the max number of guests on the boat?

 

Did either of you consider Ichobezi or any other houseboat or can you comment on different boats? Thanks!

 

Just to echo Lynn's comments, fabulous images jochen!

 

@@Atravelynn I chose a group tour so I didn't really get a choice in which houseboat option to choose, but you can read the whole itinerary here, I don't think it has changed much, if at all since I went on the trip in 2009.

 

http://www.explore.co.uk/images/travelzen/files/tripnotes/published/BW2013STAN.pdf

 

I would say it had a mix of relaxation, birding and culture with the included trip to tsodilo hills, it's just that I personally think they could have been more flexible as regards the boat trips, as we only really had the one trip in our 3 nights to see the carmines which, for me, was the real highlight of my time on the boat.

[egilio]

Awesome trip report!

 

Those 3 male lions are actually all young lions with mohawks (and other features like pink noses also indicate they're still subadults), no full manes.

Your brown-snake eagle with the the monitor lizard tale is actually a young bateleur.

 

Your photographs are fantastic I have to say!

[Jochen]

Hey Egilio,

 

That bateleur; holy s*** you're right. I should have noticed. No tail!

About the lions; I meant to say one was older than the two others but somehow managed to screw that up.

[Atravelynn]

Thank you kittykat and Jochen. Great info.

[kittykat23uk]

Looking at the PDF itinerary, it looks like any boat trips are optional extras for that tour now. I am pretty sure ours was included in the price. We did, however pay extra for a boat trip in Chobe, which I also felt should have been included, as there were no other activities scheduled for that afternoon.

[Jochen]

I realized I never actually finished this trip report. It still lacks the info on McKenzie 4x4.

If you read back this post then you'll realize that something was off with the car. Yes, it looked new, but it wasn't. It was just thoroughly washed and cleaned, but if I recall correctly it had +100K km on the counter. Still, nothing wrong with that. But why was the bonnet loose??

Well, we soon found out that the car had been in an accident. The grille was attached with plastic strips to the bull bars, to name but one thing. Via an "insider" (a guy from Maun who knew the company well) we found out that McKenzie does this with most cars; they buy cars that have been in an accident, fix em up, and rent them out. Again; nothing wrong with that.

 

When we drove from Haina to 3rd Bridge, and passed Maun, we told them about the bonnet, and told them the lodge even spent two hours trying to fix them but they couldn't be welded because they were made out of some cast iron. They admitted that the hinges of the bonnet were toast even before we left (see this post). They offered to replace them (they were going to try to get the original parts from the garage in town), but we had no time for that. Nor did we want another car; we liked this one. And up to that point we had managed just fine with the bonnet being loose. It remained in place due to the lock at the front, and the most bumpy roads were behind us (at least the ones you do at an outside-game-reserve speed). So we drove on with the same car, in the same state, and finished our self-drive part in Kasane a week later.

 

Back home, after a few weeks, I got a mail from McKenzie saying they charged us (via our credit card) for the damages on the car.

They charged us for;

- the bonnet rings ...even though they had admitted the bonnet had been loose from the start of our self drive.

- a back bumper cover ...apparently we lost that somewhere. But why would a car can lose such a thing? There's only one conclusion; it must have been loose from the start, again from having been in an accident.

- a missing kettle, fork and flask ...I can agree some small stuff got lost. But surely we didn't take a kettle back with us to EU, on an airplane. So this is a bit of a mystery; we hadn't used this kettle, our travel buddy André had used his.

 

Bottom line of all this;

I know McKenzie apparently has a good reputation in the area. A group in Savuti camp had a problem with the axle of their trailer, and McKenzie were the only firm that wanted to help them. But for us personally, being charged for issues on the car that were not caused by us, left us with a bitter aftertaste. I dare say that, as far as McKenzie 4x4 is concerned, to us it looked a bit as "in the land of the blind, one-eye is king". We're sure that if they had more competition in Maun, they wouldn't pull such stunts.

[FlyTraveler]

@@Jochen - Fabulous photography (as on your Namibia TR), enjoyed the photos very much! Lots of useful information, as well. Have you published this somewhere else? When I got to the part where you mentioned that you ran into that famous mobile safari guide (Ewan Masson), I realized that I have read the report before, if it is not published somewhere else it must have been here.

In any case, reading it confirmed my assumption that I should not attempt a self-drive safari in Botswana if I am not experienced enough and there isn't anyone with similar experience with us. We went to the safari camps with organized game drives option instead (transfers by air).

 

Self-drive in Namibia looks not as demanding, though... People do it even with regular sedan cars. We will consider a 4X4 self-drive in Namibia in the future.

[Jochen]

Hey @@FlyTraveler.

 

I might have posted it on aardvarktravel, but that forum is not very active anymore.

 

Namibia can easily be done with a 2x4, but you need an SUV, not a sedan.

Botswana you need a 4x4. And best to go with multiple cars, so people can help each other.

 

Ciao,

 

J.

[johnkok]

@@Jochen - I have to thank you again for posting about the houseboat. Based on your TR, my wife and I spent 3 nights on it in April 2014 - the Delta Belle - with Lucas (boatman), Clifford (captain) and Bashi (cook) - the same guys you had in your shot of the kitchen. From you pix, it looks like we even spent our nights in the same room you did - downstairs, forward starboard side. Quite possibly too, we were crowded out of the dining area the first night by the same insects :-D

 

Apart from our feeling slightly overwhelmed by the insect invasion the first night, we enjoyed our time. We did the Delta Belle as an interlude between 6 nights in andBeyond's Nxabega and 6 nights in Kwando's Lagoon. Worked like a charm.

 

To anyone on ST pursuing the sighting of a Pel's Fishing Owl, go to Shakawe! There's a pair at least in that neighbourhood. Sometimes in the trees bordering the river but inside a military compound, but at other times, outside of it. That first time, and with permission, we got a few shots off from the small speedboat. Second time around, we could get off onto land and got much better shots of a pair of them. There might even be a third (probably their offspring) but I cannot be sure as they never sat together while we were there, craning our necks and pointing our lenses up into the canopy.

 

As it turned out, the Delta Belle was a "private house boat" for us as we were the only guests. The Delta Belle has fewer rooms (but they are bigger) than the Ngwesi - their sister vessel. From what I can see in the pix I took of it, the Ngwesi has a "close-able" dining area - which I think is a definite plus for dinners and just sitting around in the evenings - something which was not quite feasible for us as we almost always retreated from the insects - back to our "sealed" rooms. The Ngwesi also has an open area, which is also a plus for setting up the tripod and cameras for un-disturbed shots of whatever comes up.

[Jochen]

Hey John,

 

Glad you liked it! It's one of those things about which we immediately said "we're gonna do this again".

 

So when do we get to see the pics? Want to see that Pel's again!