If you’ve ever dismissed Botswana as an unattainable dream, think again. It’s not all chic designer safari lodges where you pay up to £400 a night for the luxury of barn-sized, air-conditioned tents. You can still have the safari of a lifetime for half the price and get up close to the real Africa.
How? Mobile camping safaris are the answer, as I just found out on a wonderful eight-night trek through the Moremi Game Reserve with Letaka Safaris. Letaka is the Setswana word for the tall phragmite canes that grow around the fringes of Delta lagoons, hence the company name chosen by Brent and Grant Reed, also known as Letaka Brothers.
Now in their early 30s, the couple grew up in South Africa, where they developed a passion for birds and snakes, but always dreamed of the big game found in neighboring Botswana.
Today, Botswana is home, and with Brent or Grant as your guide, Letaka Safaris is becoming synonymous with seeing wild Africa the way it was meant to be done, sleeping under a tarp with a mobile camping crew that really knows the ropes. .
There were six of us on safari: my wife and I, my brother and his wife, and a couple of friends we’d known for years. Together we made the perfect numbers to fill the open Toyota Land-Cruiser waiting for us on the dusty Xakanaxa airstrip.
Here we met Brent, Letaka’s older brother, who would be our guide and driver, and together we set off through the dry September forests to our first camp at Bodumatau, the place where the lion roars.
My wife and I are veterans of safaris, but the others were new to mobile camping and I saw them staring in dismay at the dull brown, travel-stained tents they would be sleeping in for the next eight nights. The expression on his face said it all. Oh Lord!
I could almost hear their thoughts as they ducked through the doors to inspect their stores. Each was tall enough to stand up and equipped with two single beds but nothing more, leaving enough room to stow your bags. Outside, under the awning, there were some basic necessities: canvas sinks, khaki towels, and a mirror, and behind each tent, protected by a canvas wall on poles, was the luxury of a private bathroom with a throne. of plastic. Don’t go out with a torch and a roll of toilet paper on this safari!
And little by little, one by one, I could see my safari companions relax. It was (for them) the unexpected happiness of a hot bucket shower that started it. Then the magic of drinks by the campfire kicked in, as sparks flew to join the stars and scops owls chirped in the velvety dark. And finally, the Lamplight Dinner, a three-course dinner with a sumptuous chicken casserole for main course, accompanied by excellent South African wines that tasted so much better because they were included in the price.
No one, myself included, had expected to eat so well on a mobile safari. But that was because Brent had hired Frank Nkiwane to cook for us. Frank, a big, jovial Zimbabwean, learned his trade from him at an Italian restaurant in Bulawayo, and for my money he’s the best bush chef in Botswana.
In total we stayed in three private camps and each one was different. Our first camp in Dumatau was set up in a raspberry grove overlooking a lagoon where ospreys screeched and hippos growled beyond the reeds. Our second camp was in the shade of a camelthorn forest not far from the Khwai River with its bateleur eagles, malachite kingfishers and herds of breeding elephants. And at Maya Pools, our last camp, dominated by a sausage tree whose crimson flowers carpeted the ground, we saw a handsome male leopard and were visited in broad daylight by a magnificent old lion, one of Dead Tree Pride’s two resident males. . .
By the end of the trip, they had all become mobile campers. They had learned that a vacation stripped of all trivia and unnecessary frills can be just as sweet as any five-star lodging experience; that a tent is simply a safe place to sleep and store your gear while living outside in the sun and wind, sharing the boundless forests and floodplains of the Moremi with the lions and elephants that walked almost every night through our camp.
Above all, what my safari companions discovered were the true luxuries of mobile camping; not just the hot showers and cool sunsets, the same-day laundry and the magnificent meals Frank conjured over beds of hot wood ash, but also the priceless joys of exclusive camping, the total freedom that comes with having your own private vehicle, and hiring one of Botswana’s most respected guides to reveal the magic of Moremi.
http://www.aardvarksafaris.com/articles-botswana-mobile.htm