Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana

Moremi Game Reserve is the only part of the Okavango Delta that is officially set aside as a wildlife preserve, and we'd heard from other travelers that it's an incredible place. Before we left on our trip, the company we rented our vehicle from told us that all the campsites in Moremi had been booked out for the past year, so we'd have to take our chances and see what we could find when we got there. Luckily, after an afternoon of driving to different offices, we were able to book campsites for four nights in Moremi.

We left Maun early one morning and headed toward the South Gate of Moremi. We got there early enough to be able to do a bit of a game drive on our way to the camp site. (Seriously, the drives here are LONG - we had to go about 2 hours into the game reserve just to get to our campsite - and that doesn't including stopping and looking at animals on the way).

Yawning Hippo at Black Pools

Giraffe skeleton

Male impala having a little munch

When we arrived at our camp site at Third Bridge, we had a nice surprise - a handful of elephants were quietly eating on the edge of the camp during the sunset, including this mother and baby. They stayed until the sun went down, and then wandered into the bush.We also had a huge bull elephant just outside the back wall of our outdoor shower - we waited until he walked away to take our showers.

Mama and baby at sunset

That evening, we heard all kinds of wildlife around our tent, including lions roaring about 500 yards away, which is one of the most incredible sounds we've ever experienced.

The next morning, we got up early and went out for a game drive, hoping to find the lions we'd heard the night before. It was a pretty quiet morning (sure, we saw lots of elephant, giraffe, zebra and other plains game, but we were ready for a little excitement!), and we were discussing whether or not to turn around and head back to camp before the sun got too hot. We decided to try just one more loop, and were completely delighted to bump into these big boys:

Three male lions in the early morning

These male lions were lying nearly in the road - in fact, two of them had their paws hanging in the tire tracks. We pulled up next to them (meaning, about 10 feet away) and sat with them for 45 minutes as they cleaned each other, licking and purring like normal house cats, except quite a bit bigger and more vicious. They were sleeping near a waterhole, and when we turned to peek at the waterhole we noticed this honey badger coming in for a drink.

Honey badger DO give a damn (if you don't get this reference, please go to YouTube and search for "honey badger don't give a damn" for some hilarious videos on honey badgers)

The honey badger made its way to the water until the wind changed and it caught a whiff of the lions - as soon as it smelled them, it took off in the opposite direction. We managed to catch a quick glimpse of a cheetah as well, and decided that was a pretty successful morning and headed back to camp.

That evening, we were hopeful that the elephants would come back, but they didn't come by before dark. We did, however, have a huge hyena march right into our camp - she wasn't worried about us at all! She came up to the camp fire to check to see if there was any meat on the grill - when she saw there was nothing for her to steal, she moved off to the next camp site.

The next morning, it was time for us to move to Khwai Camp Site on the northern edge of Moremi. Khwai is quite wild - it's well known for having a lot of predators visit the camp sites at night, so we wanted to get there in plenty of time to set up camp and make dinner before dark.

On the way, we stopped to watch a family of monkeys playing in a tree above the road - one of the best things about doing a self-drive is that we can stop and watch whatever we want without having to worry that we are on a set schedule. Vervet monkeys are incredibly entertaining, and their complex social structure makes for interactions between the monkeys you can watch for hours.

Young vervet monkey

Once in Khwai, we agreed that we should do some prep work to get dinner ready so we could go on an afternoon game drive (we'd heard there was a leopard in the area we really wanted to find!) and still have an early dinner. As we were chopping vegetables, we heard the cracking of branches that can only mean one thing: elephants. We realized a family of elephants was heading straight for our camp, so we threw the pots and pans into the car, and watched as they ate their way around our camp site.

This elephant walked past our camp, then managed to pull down an entire tree

After the elephants left, we finished our prep for dinner and jumped in the car for a quick afternoon game drive. We'd heard that there was a leopard in a leadwood tree with an an impala kill very close to our camp, but we never managed to find it. We did, however, spot this beautiful giant eagle owl with a fresh kill in a tree.

Giant eagle owl after just capturing dinner

We drove back to camp just before sunset, and decided we should probably shower before it was dark. As Julia was showering, Asa worked on setting up the tent. He heard a noise, and was blown away to see a herd of impala run sprinting right through the camp site. He knew right away they were being chased by something, and kept his eyes out for what, exactly, was chasing them. As Julia came out of the shower building, Asa saw something moving behind her. At first, he thought it was a pack of hyena, but it turned out to be wild dogs instead:

Wild dogs on a hunt just next to our camp site

What you can't see in the photo is that Julia is standing just to the right of the bush in the foreground. The dogs ran right behind her, with one taking a few looks to determine whether or not she was a potential meal. Then they split up and took off, clearly communicating and hunting with a strategy. We fell asleep that night feeling incredibly lucky - people visit Africa for decades and never have the chance to see wild dogs, and we had them right in our camp.

During the night, we heard the roaring of lions and the howling of jackals and hyena - it's better than any kind of white noise machine you can find. We woke up very early with the goal of going for a game drive (and hopefully finding the wild dogs) before we headed north into Chobe National Park for the next night of camping.

We drove toward the Khwai River, knowing predators often pop by for a drink in the early morning. We were beyond thrilled to see wild dogs almost right away, and they were clearly on a hunt. We followed the wild dogs on their hunt, along with two safari cars, through an employee camp and watched them as they picked up the scent and then sprinted away, faster than would have been possible to follow. We decided to sit and have a cup of coffee and watch skittish impalas - the two safari cars drove away. Once again, we relied on our instinct to guide us, and as we took a turn around a thick wooded section, we found the wild dogs again on a fresh impala kill.

There were 7 dogs hunting that morning, but just three dogs took this impala down, and immediately ripped it into pieces.

Three wild dogs on an impala kill

Wild dogs usually rip their prey apart alive - just like they did with this impala

We could tell these three dogs were looking for the rest of the pack, and we soon saw the remaining four come sprinting through the bush from behind - watching them reunite was unbelievable - it was like the dogs were talking to each other and saying, "look what we did, look what we caught for you!" They were yipping and barking and wagging tails - it was incredible.

About 10 minutes after the dogs had their kill, the vultures and eagles started showing up, looking to see if they could get a bite.

An African fish eagle checking out the scene above the wild dogs

 The impala was gone in less than half an hour, and the dogs headed off after a quick drink to bring food back to their den and their pups, and all the other adults that were either sick, injured or on babysitting duty.

Post-kill drink

The best part was that we had the dogs all to ourselves for almost half an hour before we saw the professional safari cars slowly making their way to the wild dog kill. We couldn't figure out why they were driving so slowly until they got closer - turns out they were following a lioness who must have smelled the blood and was checking out the scene to see if she could snag any food for herself. She ended up just watching from the bushes for a while and giving up, but it was still an incredible scene.

And if that weren't enough excitement for the morning, we came across a male and female lion on a buffalo kill, just happily ripping the contents of the buffalo's belly out and spreading it across the grass. It was amazing to see how the lions weren't at all bothered by the game cars - we're not sure if that's a good sign or a bad sign when it comes to letting wildlife be wild in these game reserves.

Lioness pulling apart a Cape buffalo from the inside out

As we've been traveling, we keep hearing that we are lucky. We know we're lucky in that we get to be on this adventure, but we're also seeing so much incredible wildlife - much more than others have seen on similar trips, so we are incredibly grateful for our experiences. This trip has been life-changing, and continues to shake us to our core each and every day. We live in a beautiful, vicious, thrilling world, and we're so happy we're getting to experience this.