Botswana Wildlife Safari
Our 14th Explore tour.
Travelled as a couple. 10, including ourselves, on the tour plus guide - 2 couples, 1 family 3-some, 3 singles, plus 1 guide/driver.
This Explore Botswana Wildlife Safari had many wonderful aspects. But, it wasn't without issues, some within Explore's control, others less so.
A very big up to Titus, one of the best guides we have had. What with one party's late arrival, the family group's "missing in transit" luggage, and the camp attack - see later - he kept the tour on track and sniffed out numerous outstanding wildlife encounters.
Was surprised though that Titus was solo. He did ALL the driving and guiding. All our other Explore trips have had a driver in addition to the guide. It is concerning the number of working hours he has to do during the trip.
The bush camping was better than expected (we have an Explore reference point, having camp-safari with them in Kenya 15 years ago). Roomy tents, comfortable bed and bedding - though the single pillow needed padding out. And the personal toilet and shower at the rear of each tent worked fairly well, though hot water for shower limited.
I won't list all the wildlife seen. Everything you'd expect, and much of it several times eg multiple prides of lions, multiple elephant herds with many young, even rare wmild dog families. 1 leopard, eventually. Regrettably no cheetah - but that's safari for you.
And a good feel for a multitude of different environments - river side, open plains, forested, bush,...
On the downside... we found the main food very disappointing. The occasional "processed meat" dish were quite nice - BBQ burgers, once, lamb mince, once - as were the camp made bread, and breakfasts. But the many evening meat dishes had tough, dry, poor cut meat. Unsauced, only bottle table sauces. All these would have been better as stews, and easier for the camp cooks to manage. Most veg were almost raw, especially cauliflower and broccoli, of which there was a lot, and tepid! And the meagre 2 spoonfuls of "soup" were baby-food puree and barely tepid. The "minestrone" was essentially congealed gravy. All the soups would have been improved by the simple addition of a cup of boiling water. Puddings barely amounted to a meagre amount.
Not aware of anyone in group having any "hygiene" issues but there was no visible group hygiene precautions insisted upon (unlike the compulsory pre-meal hand washing on our Kenya trip) . No encouragement to the group to sanitise before accessing communal food. And no Titus hygiene precautions when he was setting out the various in-transit shared picnic lunches.
Comparing the Explore trip notes to reality - the journey times were often vastly underestimated, to the significant detriment of the tour's enjoyment. In particular both the day 9 "We should arrive at Thamo Telele around lunchtime." and the day 10 to the houseboat for "lunch" were VASTLY underestimated. In both cases it was midafternoon 3pm-ish when we arrived. In fact unless we had left at stupid-o-clock in the morning there is no way we could have arrived at either location "for lunch".
At Thamo there was no time even for any freshen up after a 7am start and 8 hour open vehicle journey, but straight into buffet "lunch" (actually 3pm), which we had to pay for even though there was no alternative (many kilometres outside Maun).
I would seriously question Thamo as a stop. Whilst the accommodation was quite luxurious, the having a tour of their captive animals (mostly giraffes) in a confined environment felt at odds with the "wildlife safari" of the whole tour.
Timing wise, similarly we did not arrive for "lunch" on the boat. Merely mid afternoon tea and cake.
The cave painting trip, from the boat on day 11, took over 7 hours return trip - it's not just up the road.
The houseboat cruise itself was only 1 mile upstream, moor up for the night, 1 mile return. But the wildlife river cruise from the houseboat was memorable.
The most significant incident was overnight day 2 in our fixed (luxury) tents near Chobe. 4 of the group's 6 tents, including ours, were broken into, access gained by a knife slit to the canvas of each tent. I heard a noise and sat up, and that probably stopped entry into our tent, and we lost nothing. However, significant goods - cameras, electronics, binoculars, day bags, cash & cards, and 1 passport (thankfully later recovered from bushes nearby) were stolen from the other 3.
Titus/Explore moved us to a holiday villas gated compound for the following night. And over the following days noticeable time had to be spent, for those who had losses, sorting out police visits, reports etc.
Overall it is a recommendation. The night 2 incident was unfortunate external factors (though hopefully that camp had improved it's security measures). But some of the timetable / timescale needs a rethink. And the food rethought, even with the same ingredients.
