Little Kwara (Part 1)

Little Kwara is the safari camp on the Okavango Delta in the Moremi Game Reserve that Roger and I stayed at from February 12th-15th.  We flew out there Friday morning (it was only a 30 minute flight), and when we landed we were greeted by our guide and trackers for the weekend, Steve and KB.  Right away they told us that there were some lion tracks nearby that they would like to follow; 10 minutes within landing, we came across a pride of 3 lions and 2 lionesses!  It was amazing how close we could get...

As we were driving away, Steve stopped to get a picture of Rog and me with the lions in the background:

Then as we started the drive back to the camp, KB noticed a pack of 3 lionesses 200 meters away...so, off we went!

They were (like the first pride we saw) very tired

Within 40 minutes of landing, Rog and I had seen 8 lions.  Pretty remarkable!  We knew (and it was confirmed later by many people), that it is unusual to come across those so quickly, as they can be difficult to track down.  In fact, try as we might, we never saw the lions again!

Here is how the schedule goes at Kwara: wake up at 5:30am, small breakfast, then on the road by 6:30 for a game ride.  The drive lasts 4-5 hours (with a tea break! yum!), then we head back to the camp.  Eat a nice brunch, then siesta until about 3:30.  Rog and I generally hung by the pool and rested there (as lovely as the tents are- and they are amazing- there are no fans, so it was pretty much unbearable to stay there during the day).  At 3:30, we would meet up for afternoon tea and then head out for another game drive.  This time we would be out until close to 8:00 (with another tea break!), then when we got back it was time for dinner.  By the time we were done eating, we were so exhausted that we'd head right to bed...and start all over the next day!  It was WONDERFUL.  One of the great things about this set up is that we got to spend quite a bit of time with the staff and other campers.  We always enjoyed swapping stories of the different sitings from the drives.  

When we first arrived at the camp and were sitting on the patio, talking with the staff, we were able to jut sit and watch baboons, antelopes, warthogs, and vultures all hanging around the lagoon right by our camp.  As time went on, we also got to see warthogs running around the camp itself, along with monkeys stealing food at tea time and baboons drinking water out of the pool.

Ok, confession time.  I have no idea how to blog about our time at Little Kwara.  We took thousands of pictures and have so many great stories.  I think I am going to have to break this up into several posts with just a few pictures on the blog itself, and then provide a link for you to see all of the great pictures.  Trust me, it will be worth the time you spend looking at all of it :)  That being said, I am going to wrap this post up with just a list of all the animals we saw.  Again, stories and pictures to come!

First of all- Birds: way too many to keep track of.  Hundreds of different species, and so many were beautiful!  There were a couple of ugly ones, but that always happens, right?

Lions(!!)

Elephants (my favorite!!!!!)

Zebras

Hippos(!!)

Crocodiles

Giraffes

Hyenas

Jackals

Cheetahs(!!)

Red Lechwe

Impala

Monkeys

Baboons

Warthogs

Springbok

Kudu

Wildebeests

Steenbok

Waterbuck

Hartebeests

Well, that's all for now!  Much more to come throughout the week...there's no internet at my house, so I can't update this as often as I would like to.