Photographic Safari: Self Drive Tips for Capturing the Big Five

There are pros and cons for paying to go on safari or do your own self drive. When you go on a paid safari, you have the advantage of a trained spotter usually and you don't have to worry about watching the road as you ride along; they are doing that (you hope!) You are also in a vehicle that sits high off the ground and so sometimes you can see things people in a regular passenger car cannot.



This being said, the freedom of a self drive is immense. When you find something, you can sit and watch to your heart's content. If if it something of everyone's interest like a lion for instance, my advice is to turn your vehicle so no one can block your view! If you in a busy park like Kruger during the school holidays there are pluses and minuses. One advantage of going at this time of year is that there are more eyes out spotting the game, though it can get quite hectic when one of the Big Five is spotted. People can get a little crazy so you have to assert yourself and hold your ground. This is one big advantage of a small car: you can quickly zip into a space or move around some big clunky 4 x 4's as needed.

When out driving, and you see a car stopped, backing up etc., slow down and start segmenting the viewing field and looking for it. We were able to spot a leopard in a tree by slowing down, stop, go forward six feet, look around, go forward six more feet and so on. It allows both the driver and passenger to look for what has been spotted.

We also if possible, see which direction the people are looking so we can both be looking in that direction. Before setting out on a game drive, it is advisable to look at the sightings board, and if you can talk to others at the board to see what and where they have seen anything. We go a cheetah report from a man who had seen two cheetah that very morning. We went out looking but were not successful. We did the game drive at about 10-15 km where the cheetah had been spotted which did allow for both of us to be looking.


Another tip is to not just look on the ground; look in the trees especially ones that look like a likely place to find a leopard. Look ahead, something could be crossing the road--the elephants can just suddenly appear on the side of the road. Lions seem to enjoy lying around and if you are lucky it is on the side of the road!

Vultures circling usually indicate a kill somewhere and you can try to follow their path or if they are in a tree, look around so see if you can find something nearby. Prey animals like the impala are worth watching if you see them "alert." They may be sensing one of their predators is in the area and may show themselves!

For more of our pictures of Lions Mating, see
Vicious Lovers: Lions at Dusk, Mating, Then Stalking Off For Their Nightly Hunt at http://www.traveljournals.net/stories/30097.html

Game Drives to Mahengo National Park

Game Drive in Mahango National Park

Very close to Ngepi are two parks, Mahango and Bwabwata which are currently joined together, according to the Ranger at Mahang.

Mahango is about 15 km south of
Ngepi and Bwabwata is across the river from both Ngepi and Mahango, so the wildlife there
can be seen from Ngepi and some of the animals pass back and forth between the two parks.

To go on game drives from Ngepi into Mahango Park, there must be at least 4 people for them
to set up a drive. We were not having much luck getting a game drive arranged so we decided
to do our own "intrepid adventure to the game park". We set off walking from the camp to
the main road, were picked up halfway and taken to the entrance to the park. We have done
this before and you wait, enjoy the birds at the water pool by the entrance, and visit with
the guard.

The guard at the entrance this time was interested in birds, had actually done a course in
wildlife and so helped us spot some of the birds around the entrance. She also told us some
interesting stories of different birds, life in the village, and life in general in Namibia.



Finally at about 2:00 in the afternoon, a safari vehicle from another camp arrived with
only one passenger. The guard convinced the driver he should take us into the park. We had
a very nice day, seeing wildebeest, a magnificant male kudu, hippo out of the water, elephants
eating palm leaves and roan. This park is one of the few places where you can see both roan
and sable antelope. We also saw a young Bateleur on the ground who then flew up into the tree
and posed for us for awhile!

This park is also a very good bargain for the person doing self drives. The entrance fee is
40 Namibian dollars for international travelers and there is not a fee for the vehicle.
Another interesting thing about the park is the main road in the park goes directly to the
border with Botswana. As a result, if you enter Namibia through that gate, you can have a
mini-game drive as you enter Namibia!

We were able to go on two more game drives while we were there, one with Ngepi camp and one
with people camped next to us who invited us to go along with them. On the game drive from
Ngepi, they took us out the back way past the village where many of the workers live and
then out to the main road. Christopher was along and was able to talk about some of the
animals and their habits. He also is incredible about being able to see things long
before most of us can! That day we did see both sable and roan and were quite happy about
that.

The people we went with the last day wanted to see elephants, and he was quite into birds
so was quite happy to stop and look at birds as we went along. We drove the entire length
of the 4x4 track but did not see much wildlife. It was interesting to see the topography
change as we went along the track. We were successful in seeing elephants and even more
exciting were the wattled cranes. This is the third time we have seen them in our trips
to this park.




Sieg and May, thanks for the great drive! Come see us!





One horned Roan?





Owl, but which one?






There are some awesome baobab trees in Mahengo!





Immature Snake eagle?






Male giraffe, note the horns lack full hair from butting.



Elephant and baobab tree, classic Africa!





The Giant Baobab


Elephant eating palm