Happy New Year everyone. We hope 2011 is a good year for everyone, filled with good travel, good times and good health.
Botswana has rarely disappointed us, it is a low tourist volume destination and the wildlife is plentiful if you know where to go. That combination means you are not jostling to get pole position at a sighting and the sightings are often a fantastic insight into animal behaviour.
So....this last trip we stayed at just three of our favourite camps, flying by bush plane between each camp and our highlights were:
Following wild dogs hunting on two separate days. Lots of bush bashing and a great driver meant we managed to keep up with these magnificent hunters for most of the time. Really, truly, fantastically exciting.
Seeing a cheetah walk through the water to cross the Savuti Channel which is of course flowing again after 37 years. We're not sure whether we prefer the Savuti dry and dusty with its huge elephant herds converging on the scarce water pans, or the channel in full flow presenting us with this great adaptive behaviour. What a choice!
Meerkats with all their antics and this time, incredibly they were supplementing their diet with huge frogs, along with scorpions and grubs.
Following a sub-adult male leopard going about his next two days' quest for food, after having his impala kill stolen by four hyenas at dusk. We wish we'd had a GPS going, you wouldn't believe how many miles he walked and the apparently haphazard path he took each day. We were really willing him to bring something down as he became noticeably thinner each day. Having said that, he did get sidetracked by one tantalising female leopard who was keen to get her claws into him. It was looking very likely that we were going to get a mating leopards viewing until a herd of elephants interrupted the amorous couple. We did see our boy catch a squirrel, eat a whole stash of frogs eggs and in desperation, stick his head down a warthog's hole extremely dangerous), before we had to catch our plane. What a great insight into the life of the elusive leopard, it's evidently tough hunting alone.
Time with the Kalahari bushmen who delighted us by digging tubers out of the ground, this one for diarrhoea, that one for the onset of malaria, teaching us the usefulness of different animal dung, pointing out that hole's a scorpion's, that one's a snake's, what's edible in the desert and what's not. And of course their language is fascinating!
At this time of the year Botswana is green, hot and the skies are building up for the rainy season so really fantastic, huge shapely cumulus clouds building, some cirrus also still present, reminiscent of my Northern Territory, Australia days. A bit of rain most days but this meant no dust to contend with and it was always short sun showers. Some fantastic lightening in the evenings, rainbows during the day. Lots of months old babies: antelopes, baboons, warthogs and birds. The carmine bee eaters were like dolphins riding the wake of our vehicle, catching the insects we flicked up. Really beautiful birds accompanying us at the start and end of our drive each day, the youngs ones sometimes messing up their landings:)
Only one frown inducer on the trip, and that was an Error 30 on one of the camera bodies. Not fixable on the trip. It's a shutter problem requiring a trip to Fixation now that we're back but you can imagine the slight frustration being one body down with so much action going on. Which lens to use, bloody hell! Oh, and of course because BAA doesn't know how to run an airport, we lost two days of our trip on account of not being able to get away from snowy London on time.
We were averaging 50 gigs each per day, so action-wise that's nearly up there with what we'd take in Antarctica! As always, a full slideshow and trip report to follow in the next couple of weeks, once we've had a chance to look through them all. 
Best wishes, Happy New Year!
Julie and Adam
Botswana Christmas 2010 - Happy New Year 2011!
