Tag: okavango

Celebratory Safari – Planning Document 2023 Botswana & South Africa – 6 weeks

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Botswana and South Africa Safari MAY 5th – JUNE 12th 2023

DateDayPlaceAddress/ReferencePrice £
05/05/23 HomePick up Kilroy Cars 4.00pm airport transfer£140
Heathrow 22.30 flightVS449 Economy Dream Delight including 1 nt B&B Garden Court Joburg, Airlink return flight to Botswana, 1 nt Chobe Safari lodge dbb£3159.99
06/05/23 Joburg 10.25 Garden Court OR Tambo International Airport 2, Hulley Road Isando 1627 South Africa
Free airport/hotel transfers  		 
7/05/23   Or Tambo Joburg to Kasane 11.50Terminal B 9.50am check in  arrive Kasane 1.35pm 
Kasane Avis car hirePick up car at Avis 14.00 pick up  Toyota Urban Add additional insurance. Return 14.00 on 18/05/23  £449.00
BWP 7,362.07
 Chobe Safari LodgeChobe Safari Lodge Book in
Afternoon Safari		 £70.00
08/05/23 Gweta Lodge  Gweta Lodge Including B & B & Lunch & buffet Dinner Full Day trip Ntwetwe Pan + Meerrkat Nxai Pan full day trip The trips may have to be paid in US$1000each – cash£1141
BWP18725.00
09/05/23 Full Day trip Ntwetwe Pan + Meerrkat£778
10/05/23 Rest Day 
11/05/23 Nxai Pan full day trip£778
12/05/23 Maun LodgeBed and Breakfast  £400
BWP6.560.00
13/05/23 Day trip to Moremi US$800 paid in US$ cash£622
14/05/23 Rest Day 
15/05/23 3 hour boat cruise US$1000  paid in US$ cash£778
16/05/23 Nata LodgeSpoke to Brenda as invoice had 1 night but charged 2 nights which we wanted Colleen confirmed in email. Night drives are available book when there£160
BWP 2620.00
17/05/23 
18/05/23 Avis KasaneReturn car to Avis by 14.00 Chobe Safari lodge collected and transferred us. 
Chobe Safari LodgeBooked with booking.com 8 nights Breakfast and Dinner To pay at Chobe£1411
BWP = 23,168,50
19/05/23 Pay for ½ day Safari at lodge negotiated with Dorkus £280 per 6hrs for 6 days & One boat trip £70£1680

£70.00
20/05/23  
21/05/23  
22/05/23  
23/05/23  
24/05/23   
25/05/23   
26/05/23 Kasane AirportAirlink 4Z307 Booking ROU12K arrive Joburg 3.55pm 15.55 
Johannesburg AvisCollect car from Avis – Booked Rave but requested Toyota Urban ask for screen and tyres and super waiver  £1084.44
  Friends2 Nights at Friends 
27/05/23 
28/05/23 Kruger Berg-En-DalDrive to Kruger National Park Berg-en-dal  BA3U  All Accomodation £890
29/05/23 
30/05/23 Kruger Lower SabieLower Sabie  BD2
31/05/23 Kruger OlifantsOlifants NG2U perimeter next to renovations
01/06/23 Kruger SataraSatara BD2
02/06/23 
03/06/23 
04/06/23 
05/06/23 Kruger PretorioskopPretorioskop BG4
06/06/23 
07/06/23 Kruger Berg-en-DalBerg-En-Dal BA3U Perimeter
08/06/23 
09/06/23 JoburgHotel to be booked – City Lodge Morningside Meet with Family£45.00
10/06/23 Friends Staying with friends 
11/06/23 Joburg OR Tambo InternationalReturn car to Avis 4.00pm 16.00  Virgin Atlantic  Delight VS450  6.50 pm 
12/06/23 London Heathrow5.00am Kilroy Cars Airport to home transfer  £140
Total£13,796.43

Botswana – Day 9 & 10 – Rest, reflect and Moremi Game Reserve.

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Day 9 

We spent day 9 in the Safari Lodge hotel in Maun. The previous day had been wonderful, but it was a long tiring day. To get maximum enjoyment out of our adventure we knew we needed to put in some “nothing “ relaxation days …this was one of these. We slept in late, prepared the bag to send to 5he laundry and reflected on our previous day….. The Okavango is an extremely expensive adventure, camping makes it slightly cheaper but even that’s probably one of the most expensive camping experiences anyone can have. Mobile camping with a company also reduces the cost slightly but John and I are no campers. It was the same as in the Pans area, unless you are an extremely competent 4×4 driver and know how to get through soft sand tracks which can leave all 4 tyres spinning helplessly, you need to go with a Safari company or hire both a vehicle and a driver……( for those who think they are good enough to self drive don’t forget to let your tyres down ….hard tyres really churn the sand up so always drive this type of road with soft tyres. One of the reasons it’s so expensive here is that with both the two safaris we did in the pans and the two from Maun you have to either be a party of 4 or pay for 4 people…..it seemed the majority of companies were charging US$250 per person and all insisted on a minimum of 4 people…..this is what makes it so expensive when it’s just the 2 of us…most people on normal budgets just find the cost prohibiting……..we had decided that this was a very special occasion so it was worth “splashing the cash”.

We updated our Facebook pages, what’s append home and prepared for the following day. We had agreed with Monametsi that we would have a full day in Moremi Game reserve. He had kindly dropped the price to US$800 for the day.

Day 10

We were stood outside the hotel at 5.00am, ( an hour which doesn’t appear on my clock at home, unless we are jet-lagged !!!), waiting for Monametsi to arrive and for one of his Safari vehicles ……time was passing at 5.50am we were about to give up our wait…besides it’s cold even with fleeces, scarfs and gloves at that time of the morning…..just as we were about to go back to bed! …the Safari vehicle arrived…. It turned out the battery had been stolen during the night so the driver had put his car battery on it but that wouldn’t allow us to stop and start with confidence. So we were to set off and wait at the end of the tar for Monametsi to catch us up with a new battery, our breakfast and lunch…. Which is exactly what happened although the blankets were forgotten and we were very cold…

With new battery fitted off we went again…before we got to the Reserves gate we saw a variety of wildlife both dead and alive……this included the sad sight of an elephant who had got stuck in the mud of a waterhole and died, another elephant was showing its last respects. 

Once inside Moremi Reserve we stopped at the gate again and had breakfast, used the ablution block and watched some squirrels playing and hornbills scrounging bits of dropped food.
Then we were off on our day of sightseeing and wildlife spotting. We saw copious amounts of Lechwe, Tsessebe, ( both of these we rarely see so we were delighted to see such big herds)

We also spotted elephants, zebra, giraffe, warthog, hippos, and lots of birds however our search for lions was in vein.

The reserve was quiet and, other than at the main gate, we saw very few other vehicles all day. Some of the tracks we traversed looked hardly used and were extremely overgrown. This added to the experience as we parted the grasses, it was almost off-roading, and the air of suspense hung around as as we scoured the landscape for exciting wildlife spots.

We pulled up under a tree out of, the now, hot sun for lunch……Days like this need either a strong bladder or nerves of steel if you risk nipping behind the bush !!! We once again passed through the South Gate as we made our exit before the 6.00pm deadline.

It was a lovely day, we returned about 8 pm and had a nice supper in the hotel…..if we were honest the day probably wasn’t worth the money but it was an area we had never explored before and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing different types of landscape and terrain as well as the wonderful wildlife.
We once again ate in the restaurant. We chatted happily to a newly retired Doctor and his wife both of whom were from England. They were on a very interesting ‘Intrepid Traveller’ Overland tour from Cape Town to Victoria Falls. The itinerary was truly adventurous and we might have been interested in something like this in the future if it hadn’t been for the couple saying how exhausting it was….this is often a problem on guided organised tours, they rarely put the much needed rest days in, which I prefer to call laundry and catch-up days…or just sleep-in days…..it’s really worth remembering this, I’d learnt my lesson on a trip to India where we’d gone a straight 7 days of sightseeing and moving on , we’d comeback needing a holiday !!!!!

Botswana -Day 7 & Day 8 -Maun & The Okavango

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Day 7 We said goodbye to Gweta Lodge and continued our trip by driving on to Maun. We spent a short time in town buying a data SIM card to put in our mobile router so we could have WiFi….we were advised to get an orange sim card…ummm!…what a waste ……it worked in Maun but nowhere else. I had booked us into Maun Lodge for 4 nights. It was expensive at around £96per night B&B  but then Maun is the 5th largest town in Botswana and the ‘Gateway to The Okavango Delta’. I hadn’t booked any activities in advance as it was our first time in Maun. When we got there I googled Safari companies because the hotel’s activities desk was very expensive. We hired a company called Moonstroll. They were very professional and Monametsi who owned the company met us in our hotel that evening and talked through our requirements. 

Day 8 We liked the fact that Monametsi turned up at 5.30am and took payment once we were on the Safari vehicle. They only took cash US$ or he would have taken Rands and he appreciated we weren’t going to pay in advance as we didn’t know whether this unknown person would pitch up or just take our money …… it was his idea to do it this way to give us confidence….they provided us with rugs, breakfast and lunch and a snack plus soft drinks and loads of water…We were off to Moremi Game Reserve and on the far side a place called 3rd Bridge which is the only place to get a boat from, at this time of the year, to go out on the Okavango Delta……..it cost US$1000 for the day………was I excited or not!!!! My dream was about to come true…I’d always wanted to do this from the age of 24 when I first visited Africa….but it is so expensive I had never been able to justify spending this sort of money on one of my ‘Must do before I die’ wishes.

Wrapped up warmly we headed off towards Moremi Game reserve. The start  of the road is tar, which we speed along for about 40 minutes and then a further 30 minutes on a gravel road and then an hour and a half on very soft sand road. We saw a variety of wildlife and birds as we got closer to the Southern gate of Moremi.

On arriving at the south gate we used the washrooms and sat and ate our breakfast before embarking on a three hour game viewing drive through the reserve before getting to the boat station at Third Bridge. 

Here we met Captain Moses and boarded his flat bottom, pontoon like boat, along with our Safari guide Kennedy. 

Once all our picnic hampers, drinks, cool boxes, camera bags etc were aboard we set off through the narrow canals of the Okavango Delta. Our first spot was a malachite kingfisher which set the standard for seeing many other fantastic sights such as African Jacana, hippos, wattled cranes, fish Eagan’s, elephants, red letchwe…….to name but a few.

The waterways were littered with floating islands of pampas grasses, papyrus grasses( which they use for basket weaving), massive beds of water lilies and loads more vegetation. 

We watched with fascination as Fish Eagles swooped in and out of the water…..sometimes successful and sometimes not…. their huge wing span moving the air above our heads as they soundlessly went about their usual activities.

Our 3 hour trip went far too quickly. It was nothing short of magnificent, awesome, breath-taking, eye-opening…….it really was the stuff dreams are made of. 

We made our return journey to the gate at high speed arriving a few minutes before closing time at 6.00pm. The rest of the shake, rattle and roll homeward bound trip was in the dark and we finally got back to the hotel around 8.45pm. 

A wonderful long tiring day. Thank you Moonstroll Safaris for turning dreams into reality …….Thank you John for saying it’s ‘A once in a lifetime experience’ so we won’t worry about the cost. I loved every minute of it.