June 18-20: Untrammeled Savuti

After leaving Moremi Game Reserve and crossing through the Khwai Community Trust lands, we headed immediately to the abutting Chobe National Park and one of the most special places in all of Botswana – Savuti Marsh. The drive to Savuti was both “fun” and challenging as it traverses the Kalahari sands which in patches is deep and soft, and in some places makes for a great roller coaster ride – or an “African massage” as Mark and Kirsten declared – as shown here:

Moremi to Savuti – The “Good” road! (21 seconds)

Moremi to Savuti – The “Fun?” road! (17 seconds)

Chobe NP (4,570 sq. mi), established in 1967 and abutting the Okavango delta to the south, is the first national park and third largest in Botswana. More importantly, it is considered to have one of the greatest concentrations of wildlife in all of Africa, and is renowned for its large elephant population. Indeed, Chobe NP is probably best known for its spectacular elephant population of over 50,000 today, which is actually the highest elephant concentration in all of Africa. Most of these are probably part of the largest continuous surviving elephant population on earth. Elephants living here are Kalahari elephants, the largest in size of all known elephant populations.

Savuti constitutes the southwestern section of the park and is centered around a relic marsh from a large inland lake formed in what is known as the Mababe Depression, whose water supply was cut a long time ago by plate tectonics. Nowadays the “marsh” is fed by the erratic Savuti Channel, which runs for 62 miles from the Chobe River and dries up for long periods, then curiously flows again as a consequence of subtle tectonic activity in the area. The channel started flowing again sometime around 2008 and in January 2010 reached Savuti Marsh for the first time since 1982, but stopped flowing again in 2015. Consequently, the so-called “marsh” is really better described as a grassland plain as it is mostly dry grasslands most of the time. To give you a birds-eye view of what this unique “marsh” (or “swamp” as it is sometimes referred to) looks like when the channel is flowing and the marsh starts to form on the plain, here is a satellite image taken off the internet:

Here are a few pictures of what the Savuti plains look like today during the more typical dry periods when the channel is not flowing – and during the dry season. Note, there is probably enough rain each year during the rainy season to keep things pretty wet on the plain for long enough that woody vegetation doesn’t get established, maintaining the plain as a grassland:

As a result of the variable flow, there are hundreds of dead trees along the channel’s bank, given it an eerie appearance. The region is also covered with extensive woodland savannahs and rolling grasslands, as shown in these photos:

And let’s not forget about those odd but spectacular baobab trees. Savuti has a number of scattered baobabs and several groves. One special grove that we visited is called the “Gallery of Baobabs”. Here are a few shots of these magnificant trees:

One of the unique features of Savuti are the few isolated rocky outcrops or hills that stand out in stark contrast to the extensive Savuti plains, as shown here:

One of the rocky hills, aptly named “Bushman Painting Hill”, contains some ancient rock paintings left by the indigenous San (a.k.a. “Bushman”) some thousands of years ago. We managed a rare stretch of the legs and ascended the hill part way to see the small panel of rock paintings, as shown here:

What is most special to me about Savuti, aside from the wildlife concentrations – principally elephants and lions during the dry season – and the fascinating dynamics of the Savuti channel and “marsh”, is its remoteness. This is untrammeled Africa at its finest. Savuti is several hours drive on rugged soft sand tracks from any human settlements. Indeed, it is so remote and so challenging to drive to Savuti that the vast majority of visitors fly in to stay in one of the lodges. It is one of Africa’s last true wilderness areas – this makes it a very special place to me.

Before prefacing the composite video below, it is important to see our campsite at Savuti and the relaxed atmosphere of our party during our mid-day siestas:

And lets’ not forget that all important camp cuisine. Here is photo of some of the sauce options that we had on hand to “spice” up the dinner meals, which among other concoctions included a cauliflower cheese pie with grated potatoe and onion crust and, if you can believe this, a picture of some breakfast cinnamon rolls I made for one morning’s treat. Yes, that’s right, yeasted cinnamon rolls complete with cinnamon, craisons, and chopped apple, all oozing with a brown sugar–vanilla syrup! Nathan, you would be proud of your dad, even if they don’t compare to your “monkey balls”. But WOW, were these scrumptious!

WARNING, the composite video below is not for the faint-hearted! Without revealing the details, there is a 10-minute episode of yet another elephant encounter in our campsite. The video speaks for itself, but what I failed to say in my broken narrative was that the bull elephant showed NO signs of aggression or uneasiness in our presence despite the closeness of the encounter. SO, even though it looks like we could have been crushed at any moment, we were likely not in any danger by this truly “gentle giant”. That being said, I don’t think we will allow a repeat of this kind of an encounter ever again! As a follow-up, over the course of 2 full days, we had bull elephants come into our site probably 8-10 separate times, each time seeking the camelthorn acacia seedpods that must be like candy to them. On our last encounter, the morning before we left Savuti, we had 3 different bull elephants come in during the wee morning hours (still dark) to push the acacia tree with their huge bodies and feast on the seedpods that rained down. At one point, I was looking eye-to-eye with one of these giants from the roof-top loft atop the Green Dragon. In the breaking dawn light, I could make out the outline of the huge animal and could see the bright white tusks reflecting in the starlight – quite a sight and experience.

Chobe Savuti composite video (18 minutes)

From the Wildside:

Photo Gallery: