Chief’s Camp, an A&K Sanctuary
Twenty minutes after a Cessna drops me on the outskirts of the Moremi Game Reserve, I’m watching a nervous cheetah strip the flesh from a baby warthog, anxiously glancing up between mouthfuls in case of a lion ambush. “You’re lucky,” my guide Norriah tells me as he drives our 4x4 past thousand-year-old baobabs a short while later. “Cheetahs are triii-cky to find.” Tricky even for Norriah, a native of the Etsha villages, who’s spent his life navigating the Okavango Delta’s channels in his mokoro, sleeping out on the 150,000 islets scattered across the region’s lagoons whenever the mood strikes. My first camp, Chief’s Camp – an A&K Sanctuary – takes its name from the largest: Chief’s Island, the 70-kilometre-long strip to which so much of the country’s wildlife retreats when the Angolan rains flood the Delta each year. Set within the Mombo Concession and encircled by mopane forest, its 11 airy, thatched-roofed pavilions give out onto the watering hole where local elephants take their nightly baths. The herd’s still there when I go for a lamplit dinner of seared impala that first evening, a troop of noisy baboons in the sausage tree above me.
After a nightcap beside the campfire, Norriah escorts me back to my pavilion in case there’s a leopard in the vicinity – and when he raps on the door the next morning at 5am, there are prints leading from the red dirt beneath my room into the floodplain grasses. Our first mission of the day, he tells me, is to follow a lion roaring from beyond the termite mounds on the horizon, and soon we’re cruising through the African dawn, Norriah stopping now and then to teach me how to make a toothbrush from the twigs of a mustard tree, or to direct my binoculars towards a fish eagle soaring in the blue distance. I’m so wrapped up in his stories that I almost miss the lion curled up on a bluff in the golden light until it lets out a roar that carries eight kilometres across the Delta.
This young male becomes our guide for the rest of the morning as he patrols his domain, leading us past an elephant rattling a palm tree to drop its makalani nuts. After a fan-cooled siesta, our second drive begins outside a wild-dog den as the pack emerges in the gathering dusk – three curious pups included – then it’s time for a sundowner by the side of a lagoon. Parked amongst a tangled grove of acacias, I spot a colossal hippo snuffling among the water lilies as a herd of Cape buffalo muscles in on the opposite shore. “Does this ever get old?” I ask Norriah. “No,” he replies happily, “because it’s always changing” – and as if on cue, a leopard steps out from the brush.
Founded in 1999, Chief’s Camp is as close to a safari camp as you get in the Okavango Delta; you can see the majority of the Big Five here from the saligna-wood bar or while lounging by the jackalberry-shaded pool. Between July and August, expect to find the lagoon reaching almost to the edge of the main camp, with guides leading mokoro safaris down channels lined with Angolan reed frogs and red lechwe herds, while birding is the main attraction in the drier months, with more than 400 species recorded at Chief’s Camp alone, from helmeted guineafowl to goliath herons.
This being an A&K Sanctuary, Chief’s Camp is as comfortable as the landscape is pristine. The rooms are some of the largest in the region, all soft linens, sage-green accents and Southern African woods, with a pair of Leica binoculars set out for every guest and a range of field guides and Bantu artworks lining the shelves. My four-poster is so cosy I’m briefly tempted to stay in bed when my 5am alarm sounds, and there are both echoing rainfall showers and deep, freestanding baths to soothe muscles tired from the 4WD’s bouncing. (Once, mid-marula-scented soak, I turn around to find a dozen vervet monkeys watching me through the glass doors of the veranda.)
Breakfasts can be taken in the main pavilion, watching blue mist rise off the clover-studded water, or out in the reserve on your morning drive, but either way, expect dishes that recall The Wolseley: pastries still warm from the oven; boiled eggs and bacon rashers; pots of strong tea. Lunches tend to be lighter (fresh juices, homemade breads, green salads), and dinners are either traditional braai accompanied by performances or three-course affairs that might begin with soufflés and end with pavlova. As for the service: Chief’s Camp is the sort of place where the bartender will remember that you enjoyed sorghum beer on your last visit three years ago, and a massage therapist will appear at your door with a pot of Cape Aloe balm if you’ve caught the sun on your afternoon drive.
If you’re on honeymoon and set on an adults-only vibe, it’s worth considering that Chief’s Camp does welcome children over the age of six. That said, in contrast to many Botswana camps, there’s little in the way of forced mingling here, with guests served at individual tables during meals. If you’re after total and utter privacy, consider the Geoffrey Kent suite, a two-bedroom pavilion with its own and dedicated staff – or even the adults-only Baines’ Lodge, another A&K Sanctuary in the Okavango Delta with just six pavilions.
From Chief’s Island, it’s a 40-minute flight to Wilderness Mokete, lagoons flashing in the midday sun below my helicopter. From the passenger seat, I glimpse bloats of giraffe towers feasting on bright-green canopies – but I touch down in an entirely different landscape: the open, dusty plains of the Mababe Depression. This parched basin on the eastern fringes of the Okavango Delta is a place both wilder and more brutal than Moremi Game Reserve – one where you’re all but guaranteed to witness apex predators on the hunt. Having dropped my luggage at camp (and cooled down with some iced rooibos), I head straight out with my guide Jonah, where I smell our first sighting before I see it: a decaying elephant in a clump of skeletal trees and, clustered around it, 12 lions. The former, he reassures me, will have died of natural causes, the hyenas taking their share after the lions, before the vultures work over the bones.
There are bones everywhere in Mababe: bones, and Cape buffalo, herds 3,000-strong appearing on the horizon in a cloud of dust and a chorus of grunts – which grow louder and higher-pitched when the lions close in. Of the three known prides during my visit, the largest is the Chobe, with 40 adult cats. The next morning, I watch as its lionesses fan out in a horseshoe ring, silently encircling a few straggling buffalo, before launching themselves in tandem onto a screeching calf. A few agonising minutes of coordinated suffocation later, the lions move in to gorge themselves. (Mokete, Jonah cheerfully informs me, means feast in Setswana.)
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Not that the wildlife sightings at Mokete are always tragic. The zebra herds are so vast that you feel the full effect of their motion camouflage, while some of the largest populations of sable and roan antelope in Botswana graze on the dust-covered grasses here. As for the elephants: Jonah and I spend much of my last afternoon crouched silently in a hide, watching more than a hundred of them plashing and parading through the water in front of us. The smallest calves barely come up to my waist, hiding behind their mothers’ legs when a crocodile shifts its weight amongst the sedge grass, while the herd’s matriarchs dwarf the young fever-berry trees reaching up out of the scorched earth. Even when the sun begins to drop below the horizon, I’m reluctant to depart – but, as usual, Jonah knows best. Often, the rarest sightings at Mababe happen after nightfall, so he takes a special detour on the way back to camp, casting a flashlight across the inky darkness. Soon, we’ve found an African wildcat, its eyes gleaming as it closes in on a rodent; a porcupine waddling through the long grasses; and even an aardvark rootling around for termites.
Mokete is the only camp in a 50,000-hectare radius, and with a maximum of 18 guests at once, it feels remote even by Botswana’s standards. If the other Wilderness properties in the region were conceived to be as enveloping as possible (see: Mombo), Mokete’s design has been kept consciously minimalist to avoid detracting from the Mababe landscape. At its centre is an open, covered pavilion that functions as a dining room, bar, lounge and reading area (though good luck focusing on The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency when there are lions sunning themselves by the firepit), while a deep pool lies off to one side of the camp – a blessing when the mercury creeps above 40 degrees. (Impressively, Mokete runs entirely on renewable energy, but if you’re really desperate, air conditioning is available.)
Each of the nine spacious rooms is accessed via a raised pathway, and although the clean interiors are neatly furnished with woven ropes, leather details and geometric patterns that riff on aerial views of Mababe, it’s the tents’ openness that you remember. The walls and roofs here consist of mosquito nets, reinforced before sunset each night with heavy canvas (though you can and should have your tent “skylight” left open at least once in order to fall asleep beneath the Southern Cross). One morning I spend a few hours writing with a pair of “dagga boys”, as older male buffalo are called, just feet from my desk, while I’m interrupted mid-stargazing by elephants passing through camp on my second night.
As casual as the atmosphere is at Mokete, the food is more interesting than any other safari camp I’ve been to, with a real effort to serve local ingredients at buffet-style meals, from biltong to morogo greens to amasi. It’s also a nice touch that breakfast is set out around the firepit each morning, guests warming their hands over the flames in between tin mugs of coffee. The fact that many guests here are repeat safari-goers means that conversation flows naturally – and you’re bound to meet some interesting characters. On my first night, it takes all of five minutes for everyone to drag their chairs together and start recapping the day’s sightings over a bottle of Pinotage, and over the next three days, I find myself chatting with a biologist who travelled here overland from Natal; a wild-dog obsessive who parks himself outside dens for 12-hour stretches; and a French entrepreneur off to Namibia’s Skeleton Coast next.
The simplest way to get to either the Okavango Delta or the Mababe Depression is to fly into Maun via Johannesburg, then travel on to your camp via helicopter, Cessna or 4WD. If you need a few days to catch your breath before your first drive, though, consider a layover in Cape Town.
Opened in 1899 by the founder of the Union-Castle Shipping Line, Mount Nelson, a Belmond Hotel, remains the pinnacle of Cape Town’s hotel scene 127 years later, encircled by cabana-lined pools and tennis courts in the shadow of Table Mountain. Every chandelier-lit room of “The Nellie” is steeped in the history of the Mother City. Winston Churchill lived here as a foreign correspondent during The South African War, while Nelson Mandela took afternoon tea on the rose-scented terrace during his presidency. Even The Nellie’s distinctive flamingo hue dates back to World War I; manager Aldo Renato had the façade painted a celebratory pink after the 1918 armistice, and the hotel has stayed the same joyous colour ever since. Yet Mount Nelson also encapsulates the best of 21st-century Cape Town. Right now, Dada Khanyisa canvases are dotted throughout the lobby thanks to a partnership with the Norval Foundation, while designer Thebe Magugu recently designed his own “Afro-English” suite on the property’s famous Palm Avenue. The location, too, balances serenity with centrality, opening onto Company’s Gardens in one direction and the nightlife of Kloof Street in the other.
If you’re keen to be closer to the sea, One&Only Cape Town overlooks the V&A Waterfront, with fur seals darting through the marina on the resort’s doorstep. A third of One&Only’s 132 rooms are set on lush man-made islands in the harbour, while the rest occupy the top floors of the seven-storey Marina Rise skyscraper. Expect Table Mountain views and playful design touches in the latter. (Note the Namji dolls, traditionally believed to bolster fertility in Cameroon, cheekily used here in place of Do Not Disturb signs.) Begin your stay with a welcome Ubuntu juice in Vista Bar & Lounge on the ground floor, before heading to One&Only Spa for treatments that incorporate the likes of wild kelp. (The African Rungu Stick massage is deeply restorative, especially if your muscles are tense after the long flight.) Once you’ve been suitably pampered, dive into One&Only Cape Town’s activities list, which ranges from paddleboarding around the hotel’s protea-lined waterways to private tastings with local sommelier Luvo Ntezo, who curates the resort’s 700-label collection from vineyards across Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, Constantia and beyond. Still, there’s too much to explore nearby to linger for long. Here, you’re within strolling distance of many of the Mother City’s best-known sites, including Zeitz MOCAA and the ferry port for Robben Island.
