On our first full day in Savuti, we woke up, had breakfast and set out to drive around. Driving here… was hard… and confusing. Like I mentioned, there are no roads here. Just a bunch of sandy tracks heading in all directions. We had a “map” of the area, but trying to figure out what set of tracks was what on the map, was basically impossible. The gps didn’t help at all as there weren’t really any landmarks to navigate to, and we weren’t sure how to enter lat/lon coordinates into it. So, we just kind of set out driving in random directions.
The driving wasn’t easy (did I mention deep sand?). And we would keep coming upon random hills that we had to gain speed to be able to climb without losing traction. After a while we gave up. Trying to self drive around this area was too difficult. We plugged in the camp to our gps and headed there. Somehow we ended up in a riverbed, and then we couldn’t figure out how to climb our car out of it. This place was a maze. In the end, I was able to find a place to climb out of the river and we made it back to camp. We decided to leave the game drives here to the professionals.
After a relaxing afternoon (and more gin tonics), we went out on a guided game drive. The guide is driving us, and then nonchalantly mentions “lions”. We look and there are two gigantic male lions laying around. A few yards from them was a gigantic dead elephant. The lions had camped out there, munching on the elephant for several days now. The stench from the massive rotting carcass was absolutely putrid. The lions just lay there sleepily and contentedly, probably full and happy.
We drive on. Once of the things I had wanted to see the most on this trip are wild dogs. These are incredibly rare, and for a while had been hunted almost to extinction. There are only 6,000 of them left on Earth. But they can be found here and there in some parts of Botswana still. These animals are insane hunters, chasing their prey in packs and have a 80% success rate when hunting which is wild seeing as other animals like lions only have a 25% success rate. If I got to see just one of these animals on this trip, I would have been thrilled.
Well, I got my wish, as we pulled up to a pack of wild dogs. There were 5 or so adults and 12 tiny wild dog pups! Crazy! I couldn’t believe it! We stopped and just watched them for ages. The little puppies playing with each other and interacting with the adults. It was a magical moment and we were so close to them. I felt like I could have watched them forever, but eventually we continued onward.
A little bit later, our guide spotted a hyena cub. Just sitting there by itself. Cute little thing, it looked like a tiny baby bear or something.
Eventually, we circled back and passed the two male lions again. This time they were chomping on the dead elephant. Pretty disgusting site, I gotta say… lotsa blood and guts. But lions gotta eat too.
At the end of the drive, we stopped for a sundowners in the middle of the bush. The guide made us all gin tonics, and we just stood there, next to the car, sipping our delicious drinks, and watching the sun set. Incredible.
