Wild Camping in Moremi Game Reserve

We concluded our wild camping experience with Kalahari Breeze Safaris with four incredible nights in the Moremi Game Reserve.

Our Moremi wild camp crew from Kalahari Breeze Safaris

The camping experience was very similar to our four nights in the NG-32 concession, but with a different camp crew and guide. It remained hot, even hotter than NG-32 because the winds died down and kept the nights toasty. Fortunately the camp was in a grove of apple leaf and mopane trees so there was decent shade.

Our guide Tshidi

Our young yet knowledgeable guide was Tshidi. He’s been a guide for 10 years now (did he start when he was 15???) and knows Moremi extremely well. At just about every stop he had me doing glamour portraits of him with my better-than-his-iPhone camera. Beyond his knowledge of the roads and wildlife, he’s very adept at imitating animal sounds.

Black-winged stilt with ducks during sunset

The terrain in Moremi was my favorite so far. We have moved further up in the delta towards the source channels (more north, a bit more west) hence water was more plentiful, yet there were still the very dry areas giving us the contrast and broader spectrum of life. Every night was an epic sunset over wetlands with diverse bird life, and often hippos.

Honey badger

We’ve had so many “people go on 5 safaris and never see this” encounters that we are losing track. In addition to our cheetah sighting and lions with cubs eating and drinking, we saw honey badgers three different times. One time was during the day, extremely unusual and allowed me to get this photo. He disappeared quickly into a burrow.

Side-striped jackal

With the possible exception of the cheetah, our sighting of a side-striped jackal near sunset was our biggest surprise find of the trip.

Two wild dogs in moremi

We found a smaller wild dog pack, again with puppies, resting in the shade of a small copse of trees.

Male lion wading in pool

We found two different groups of male lions: one that looked like a partnership of convenience between an older male and a young battered-and-bruised male. The older male spent at least 15 minutes wandering through the pool, drinking and eating grass. Our guide suspected he has digestive problems and is trying to vomit. Just like our cats at home!

Two young male lions

Another pair of males were very likely brothers, hanging out with their similarly-aged sister. The leading theory on this is that they were booted away for a while while their mom goes around finding a mate. They all seemed very happy together.

Hippos and oxpeckers

Because of all the water, hippos were ubiquitous and always fun to watch. Usually you just see a group that starts off looking like two or three hippos in the middle of a pool, only to see that it is more like 15 or 20. It is a rare treat to see them open their mouths wide, or stand up completely during the daytime and show you their svelte physique.

The open-mouthed red-billed oxpecker is a familiar site on the hippos (and giraffes, elephants, zebras, antelope, etc.). They feed not on the ticks directly on the hippo, but the blood that they contain. And they will peck away at the open sores to keep the blood flowing and eat that. What a pleasant guest to have around!

Adult zebra with juvenile

In the drylands we saw plent of zebra, wildebeest, ostrich, ground game birds (spurfowl, francolin, sandgrouse, and guineafowl), and kori bustards.

Best of all: we return to Moremi at the end of our self drive (starting tomorrow!) and will have four nights at three different campgrounds in the reserve.