Great Wilderness Journey – Khwai Concession, July 2010

Location: Khwai Discover Camp, Khwai Concession, Botswana

Observers: Mike and Marian Myers

Photographs: Mike Myers

We recently visited the Khwai Concession area, part of the Great Wilderness Journey Exploration. We stayed at the Khwai Discoverer Camp – the top of the range of the Exploration safari camps offered by Wilderness. It was absolutely wonderful. The water levels were still a bit high for the time of the year, but with skilled driving and some detours around the really deep parts of the road, we were able to find camp!

After the long drive it was wonderful to enjoy a sundowner around the fire overlooking the grassy plain in front of camp.

We had heard about a den of wild dog puppies, so we went in search of them. A two-hour drive back to the bridge and then around the airstrip near Khwai River Lodge we found the den. It was clear that there had been a kill because there were vultures everywhere and when we got close to the den we could see the adults lying around with blood-stained jaws. Our timing was such that we had just missed the return of the adults to the den by about 20 minutes. Wild dog feed their young by regurgitating partially digested meat and we had just missed that! Nonetheless, the pups were very happy to have fat, full tummies and played around the den area. A total of 11 pups were recorded and seven adults, one of which was the mother. A very, very, special sighting and a first for me.

What was also very interesting was that the dogs appeared to be sharing their residence with a couple of slender mongooses. These little folk scurried around and scratched and went about their business without worrying their neighbours at all. At one stage, a mongoose actually poked its nose in the dogs’ den entrance. Turned out to be a total non-event – they appeared to be on good terms with one another!

After hours of watching the pups, we returned to camp where we went to photograph the sun setting over a stretch of water that was full of hippo, African jacana, malachite kingfisher, pied kingfisher and blacksmith plovers. Mike got a great shot of elephant and impala just before the sun set and someone threw on the switch that got the frogs croaking! We heard lots of hippo noises during the night punctuated by occasional spotted hyaena.

All in all, it was a beautiful area and an excellent feature of this wonderful Exploration.