It’s the height of summer!
When I think of August I think of ‘the dog days of summer’ so that’s this month’s headline subject sorted! 🤣
In this month’s Newsblog I’m writing a bit more about :
African Wild Dogs - where and when to find them
Destination Botswana - where, why, when and how to visit this incredible country
All hail the Bird Nerds - a shout out for the twitchers
Safari Q&A - how long to safari for?
Specials and Last Minute offers - read on for the latest
A secret champagne giveaway lurks on this page - good luck!!
It’s good to have you here, and thank you for reading - please let me know what you think!!
📸 As usual all photos - good, bad and fuzzy - are my own.

African Wild Dogs

Wild Dogs are one of my favourite animals to encounter on safari . They are notoriously hard to reliably locate as they are endangered and have gigantic territories through which they move at speed, so it’s always super exciting to spot them, but during our Summer months they are ‘denning’ and therefore a little easier to find. I’ve seen them in Tanzania, South Africa, Zambia and Botswana, but still haven’t found a den with puppies, unlike some of my recent clients in Botswana!

The denning site, often an abandoned aardvark or warthog burrow, is chosen by the alpha female where she’ll give birth to her litter and then stay there until the puppies are old enough to keep up with the pack. This is usually about three months, during which the rest of the pack brings food to her.

In Botswana and Southern Africa denning takes place around this time of year - between June - September - and puppies can be seen as they emerge from the den, with litters containing between 6 and 16 puppies. That’s a lot of cuteness!

The dogs are very efficient hunters, with a success rate of around 80%, which is pretty impressive when you consider that lions are only hunt successfully about 30% of the time! The dogs use their incredible stamina to run down their prey, and they’re daytime hunters too so if you’re really lucky you can witness this on a game drive.

Wild dogs are endangered with just under 7000 estimated to remain in the wild so a sighting is always a special occasion. Their primary threats are habitat loss and the subsequent diseases spread from domestic dogs. I make an effort to choose camps and lodges that support critical conservation efforts, for example the Zambia Carnivore Programme which has seen wild dog numbers increasing in Zambia’s South Luangwa and Lower Zambezi National Parks. Check out their blog, their research is really interesting and full of drama, watch a pack make a river crossing followed by a hungry croc here!

Where are the best places to find wild dogs?

South Africa – Greater Kruger including Sabi Sands and Madikwe
Botswana – Moremi Game Reserve and Kwando’s Lagoon and Lebala Camps which are located close to denning sites.
Zambia – South Luangwa and Lower Zambezi National Parks
Tanzania – Ruaha or Nyerere National Parks in Southern Tanzania
Zimbabwe – Mana Pools

Random Wild Dog Facts! 🐶

Wild dogs are endurance specialists and can cover up to 50Km in a day
Only the Alpha female breeds, and the rest of the pack take responsibility for hunting and feeding her and her puppies
They often consume their prey before it’s dead - a dog kill is not the for faint hearted. Ewwwww!
They don’t really bark, their greeting calls are a more like twittering yips and squeaks.
They are also known as Painted Wolves or African Hunting Dogs

Destination Focus - Botswana

I don’t have kids, but I know you’re not meant to have a favourite kid 😉. However, if I were forced to pick a favourite destination it would be incredibly difficult, and I would protest a lot that I loved them all equally, but under extreme duress I would say Botswana.

Why I ❤️ Botswana

Nowhere else in Africa feels quite as untouched as most of Botswana, and taking the variety of landscapes into account, it’s tough to argue with it’s reputation as the ultimate safari destination.

It’s hard to get your head around just how wild Botswana is until you appreciate that it’s bigger than France and half of it is full of free roaming wildlife. Botswana also has 5 really distinct safari areas which provide an amazing variety of environments, wildlife and activities, read on for a review.

The Okavango Delta

The Okavango is Botswana’s headline destination and deservedly so. Most of the Delta’s camps are inaccessible by road, so you fly into camp in tiny little planes which is all part of the adventure!

Camps in and around the Delta are small and intimate, most having only 10 tents or fewer. Camp styles vary from traditional tented camps like my favourite, Delta Camp, or Shinde Footsteps Camp which both focus on an authentic safari feel, right through to the ultra luxury of camps like Jao and Xijera for those really looking to push the boat out. All camps have excellent facilities so you won’t be roughing it at all but you’ll definitely feel very immersed in the landscape, and the delta can also be the the perfect place for a digital detox as some camps proudly don’t have WiFi and mobile signal is very limited.

Water is key here, and the flood brings life, transforming the dry landscape into a green, watery wilderness. The waters of the Kovango River, which start their journey in the highlands of neighbouring Angola, begin to arrive in early June, reaching their peak in July and August, before retreating in September. Activities are water dependent so it’s worth having a good chat about what you want to do before settling on a camp.

Activities in the Okavango focus on water as well as the traditional day and evening game drives, so you can take to the waters in a Mokoro (traditional dug out canoe) where you’re poled along by your guide and you glide through the channels at eye level with the beautiful little reed frogs. You can also take motor boat safaris, go fishing and walking safaris are also excellent ways to explore the islands. There is also a brilliant horse-riding safari operator here for those of you who would like to travel on 4 legs.

I genuinely could wax lyrical for many more pages here, but can’t, so please get in touch if you’re interested in an Okavango safari and we can chat about what would work best for you.

Savuti & Linyanti

Safari aficionados really rate the Savuti and Linyanti areas, and luckily they tie in well with the Delta if you’ve got time to really get under the skin of this country.

During the dryer seasons the Savuti marshes and Linyanti River and marshes form a corridor between the delta and the Chobe River in the north, attracting huge numbers of elephant, buffalo and predators, particularly lion and hyena. I’ve enjoyed some spectacular game viewing in these areas and amazing sunsets too. I really recommend trying to stay here if you have time for a longer Botswana trip.

Because it’s less of a draw than the Delta it has a small number of camps, all of which seem to get booked out really early. Activities here are primarily game drives, with some camps offering walking safaris too.

Chobe National Park and Chobe Riverfront

There are people that are snobby about Chobe but I’m not one of them. True, it’s busier than other areas in Botswana - its proximity to the meeting points of Bots, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia make it easily accessible as an add-on for travellers to these countries. However, ‘busy’ is a relative concept in Botswana and there is a lot to love about Chobe; Accommodation can be found at a reasonable price point, the Chobe River is a fantastic place for elephant lovers, and taking a boat cruise along the river watching elephants play as the sun sets with a G&T in hand? Not much can beat that!

Behind the river, the National Park itself has good populations of predators, I’ve always had great lion sightings here. A top tip is to stay at the Western end of the park where it’s quieter…

Makgadikgadi Salt Pans

Botswana was once covered by a prehistoric super-lake, and the Makgadikgadi pans are a reminder of that. Huge flat expanses of glittering white salt stretch to the horizon, broken but occasional ‘islands’, rock kopjes where baobabs flourish and you can still find traces of fossilised guano on the rocks. The Makgadikgadi area is formed of a number of different pans, only a few of which have any accommodation.

When the pans are dry, they are white, eerily bleak and covered in crusty salt flakes the size of poppadoms. After the rains the pans fill with a shallow layer of water and are home to huge numbers of migrating water birds.

The area also experiences one of Africa’s largest migrations as immense numbers of Zebra arrive at the Boteti River which borders the pans around February each year.

Activities on the pans include Quadbiking, horseriding, sleep-outs on the pans, visits to the habituated Meerkat colonies and day and night game drives in search of more unusual wildlife such as brown hyena, and aardvark. A highlight of my most recent stay was walking with a group San Bushmen, one of Southern Africa’s oldest hunter gather tribes, where we learnt about their previous hunting and foraging lifestyle, how the San use plants for traditional medicine, and watched them play an entirely incomprehensible game along the lines of Paper, Scissors, Stone which was funny and fascinating.

My favourite places to stay here are the funky Planet Baobab which has options for campers and budget travellers, and is great fun for families, and the magical, romantic San Camp for those wanting the experience this wonderful environment in true style. I really loved my stay at San Camp, it’s a very special place, the atmosphere on the pans is quite otherworldly and from a distance the billowing white tents of San Camp appear to float like a mirage - it’s magical!

Crispy salt crust of the Makgadikgadi Pans

Central Kalahari

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) is one of the largest Game Reserves in the world. It’s a massive area covering around 350,000 square miles - a large chunk of central Botswana - although the Kalahari itself extends far beyond the reserve, to the pans above and into South Africa below.

The Kalahari is technically a ‘semi-desert’ recieving 4 to 20 inches of rain a year, and the landscape consists of grassy plains and fossilised sand dunes covered in low scrub and grasses. Like the rest of Botswana the area experiences a huge range of temperatures, down to freezing at night and reaching very high temperatures during the day.

Accommodation in the area is limited to a few lodges which offer game drives, day trips to the well-known Deception Valley, Sunday, Piper and Passarge Pans, star gazing, and nature walks with Bushman trackers.

Wildlife in the CKGR is desert-adapted species such as oryx, springbok, jackals, the rare brown hyena, red-crested Korhaan and herds of wildebeest, and it’s renowned for it’s iconic huge black-maned Kalahari lions.

The CKGR is definitely not a first time safari destination but will richly reward those travellers looking for a longer stay in Botswana. If you’re curious to know more about the area I can highly recommend reading ‘The Cry of the Kalahari’ by Delia Owens who worked as a researcher here in the 70’s before she became better known for writing the bestseller ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’.

kalahari wildlife wilderbeest springbok — Busy waterhole in the CKGR

Who is Botswana for?

Botswana is such a good all round destination it really does suit everyone.

The out-of-the-vehicle activities in the Pans - quad-bikes, meerkats, walking with the San - are perfect for families with kids of all ages. There are ultra romantic camps in the depths of the Delta perfect for couples and honeymooners who can truly escape from reality, and luxury lovers and adventurers are equally rewarded by the range of accommodation from simple tents at Oddballs Camp, to some fabulously luxurious options, like one of my faves, Tuludi Camp, which as well as being all round gorgeous, has a slide down from the library-come-viewing deck to the bar - what’s not to love!!

When to travel to Botswana

It’s possible to travel to Botswana all year round. Exact seasonal rates vary camp to camp but are roughly as follows:

The ‘Green Season’ is December to Mid April. You’ll get some rain but it’s still beautiful, and warm!
Shoulder season is April, May, June, October and November
Peak Season coincides with the peak flood in the Delta during July – September

Top Tip - Travelling outside peak season is a great way of experiencing Botswana for less, some camps include June in their Shoulder Season rates and I think travelling the last week or two of this month gets you a really good bang for your buck. Contact me for more info on where and how.

How much?

Botswana has a reputation for being the most expensive destination for a safari and that’s 99% correct, due to Government policy to keep tourist numbers low, however it is possible to visit for less…

There are a small number of moderately priced camps, these get booked up a long way in advance so you’ll need to plan ahead.
Travel outside peak season, see above.
Be impulsive! Last minute discounts can be up to 25% off.
One of the best ways to maximise your budget is to take advantage of various camps’ ‘circuit discounts’, where you can get up to 20% off, see this month’s special offers for more info.

How to get to Botswana

The easiest way to get to Botswana is via Johannesburg, then take a short scheduled flight to Maun, Botswana’s safari capital. From Maun access to all the camps is via short flights in light aircraft. From Chobe or Victoria Falls you can fly back to Johannesburg.

Itinerary ideas

There are lots and lots of options, but here are a few simple suggestions:

A really good 9 night itinerary - 1 night in Maun, 3 nights Delta, 3 nights Chobe, 2 nights Victoria Falls.
10 nights Northern Botswana - 1 night Maun, 3 nights Delta, 3 nights Savuti/Linyanti, 3 nights Chobe.
Honeymoon Heaven – 3 nights Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, 4 nights Okavango Delta.
Mobile Safari – 1 night Maun, 3 nights Moremi Game Reserve, 3 nights lower Okavango Delta, 3 nights Central Kalahari, 3 nights Okavango Panhandle. This itinerary is proper Old School safari adventure where you’ll stay in luxurious tented accommodation in off the beaten track locations. It takes in some key cultural experiences such as meeting the San in the Kalahari and exploring the Tsodilo Hills – site of prehistoric Rock paintings - as well as delivering amazing wildlife.
Botswana and beyond! For some beach time you can fly on to Mozambique’s fantastic expanses of white sand or down to Cape Town for some adventures in gastronomy and viticulture before flying directly back to the UK.

One for the bird(er)s

A quick shout out for the smaller, feathered things. Safari isn’t all about the Big 5.

Almost everyone who I talk to post-safari kind of sheepishly admits with eyes averted how quickly they became interested in birds. I now enthusiastically embrace my inner Bird Nerd, and although I’m not a very good birder I still enjoy the additional dimension (literally) that birds bring to a safari. There are 11,158 bird species in Kenya alone!! I will never get bored of spending time with Ellies or Baboons and I still love watching Impalas but birds are now just as important a part of my safari check list. And how can you blame us all when you’ve got beauties like these?

If you’re paying attention and reading this properly I’m going to send a bottle of Champagne to the first person to correctly identify all these specimens - email me with your answers!! (UK readers only - sorry!)

Safari Q&A

*How many days should you spend on safari?*

When I’m planning safaris the first question I get asked is ‘How many days should we spend on Safari?’ The simple answer is as many as you can afford! Sounds a bit glib but it’s true. I don’t feel like I’ve experienced a camp or location properly unless I’ve had a **3 night stay**. This is really the minimum stay that I would recommend and should suit those on a tighter budget. It gives you 2 full days of safari activities, so if you want to max your experience you could squeeze in 4 game drives, a night drive and an afternoon bush walk (location dependent).
If you have a bit more budget to spend then it’s wonderful to have a **2 or 3 centre safari** with 3 nights (or more) at each location. Examples of that could be Okavango Delta and Chobe River Front in Botswana followed by Victoria Falls, or South Luangwa and Lower Zambezi in Zambia and in Kenya the Masai Mara and Laikipia Plateau or Samburu.
If you can’t stretch to a longer safari but still want to be away for a decent length of time the best way to dilute the cost is to spend some time in a less expensive location. There are plenty of gorgeous beach hotels in Zanzibar, Kenya and Mozambique, or if you’re in Botswana or Zambia you could visit Victoria Falls which has plenty of well priced accommodation and lots of activities.
The other extreme would be to be ‘on safari’ for the whole of your 14 day holiday, and the best way to do this without breaking the bank is a Namibia Self Drive holiday. You won’t be game viewing everyday as Namibia is more about wilderness than wall-to-wall wildlife, but it’s a superb way to enjoy a longer holiday in Africa and see some great game viewing without spending a fortune.
Sorry, I may have raised more questions than I’ve answered but I’m here - give me a call and we can talk over different options!

*A heads up on August Safari Specials!*

Hot off the press - new offers just for you!

Botswana - Kwando Safaris

This is a fantastic offer for travel in October only & clients recently returning from Kwando camps have had amazing sightings.

8 Night Package £4330 per person sharing.:

3 nights Delta + 3 nights Delta + 2 nights Chobe.

You can choose from any combination of Pom Pom, Mma and Rra Dinare or 4 Rivers plus a fully-inclusive finale at Chobe Safari Lodge.

Kenya – Gamewatchers Safaris

7 day Kenya safari & beach from £3835 per person:

3 nights Porini Giraffe Camp in exclusive Mara Ripoi Conservancy,

3 nights Cardamom House on Kuruwitu Beach, north of Mombasa.

Includes all internal flights, transfers, meals, house drinks.

Honeymooners !

Mozambique Sussuro 50% off one guest Beach luxury on idyllic deserted coast

Kenya Ol Seki – bride stays free! Ol Seki is a fabulous camp on the exclusive Naboisho Conservancy with a lovely pool and expansive views over the conservancy.

Masses of honeymoon and lots more Stay4 Pay3 and stay longer offers – too many to list so please contact me for more info !

All previous offers are still active, see previous blog posts for details or get in touch and I’ll find an offer to fit you!

Ts&Cs apply to all offers - contact me for full details

Last minute availability

There are still windows of availability for October half term and Christmas, here are a few examples:

Cheetah Plains - luxury 4 bedroom safari villas in South Africa’s heaving-with-wildlife Sabi Sands

Xanandu Villas on Zanzibar

Colina Verde exclusive house on a beautiful beach in Southern Mozambique. Perfect for a big family gathering! Sleeping up to 18 guests in 7 en-suite bedrooms

🎺A little toot on my own trumpet! 🎺

Some lovely feedback from clients who travelled in June & July:

“Thank you for organising such a fantastic trip for us to Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa, our time in the Okovango Delta at Mma Dinare was the absolute highlight seeing so many amazing animals up close and such excellent hospitality.

The big herds of elephants and buffalo at Chobe Elephant Camp were amazing, and seeing so many birds as well. All rounded off with a few days at Victoria Falls.

All the hotels and camps were fantastic. Travel and connections went without a hitch and we felt well looked after every step of the way.

We would definitely recommend Lucie for anyone planning a safari trip.

We are already thinking about our next adventure…”

Share the love!

I’m really proud that my business continues to grow thanks to your recommendations and referrals, it means the world to me, so *please* share this with friends or family who need a safari or an East Africa beach holiday, and don’t forget that if you refer anyone to me and they book I’ll send you a lovely hamper as a thank you.
For regular(ish) doses of inspiration please follow me on Instagram @safari_lucie, or like my facebook page Lucie Thaxter Safaris.

What’s coming up in September’s blog?

Active Safaris - venturing beyond the Landcruiser
Destination focus - Namibia
Safari Q&A - answering your FAQ
Special Offers and more…

Please don’t forget that I write this for you, so if there is anything you’d like to see more or less of please let me know!!

The Dog Days are here

It’s the height of summer!

African Wild Dogs