A Journal, with Pictures

Sanc­tu­ary Chief’s Camp is sit­u­at­ed on the pri­vate Mom­bo Con­ces­sion with­in the More­mi Game Reserve, at the core of the Oka­van­go Delta. The area is a mix of mature wood­lands, the biggest island being Cheif’s island on which the camp is built and ver­dant flood plains that become inun­dat­ed from as ear­ly as April every year. The camp gets its name from the deceased Chief More­mi III’s wife under whose lead­er­ship in 1963 estab­lished the More­mi game reserve. It is the only offi­cial­ly pro­tect­ed area of the Oka­van­go Delta and has result­ed in an amaz­ing con­cen­tra­tion of diverse Africa species. The Sanc­tu­ary Retreats orga­ni­za­tion owns and man­ages a num­ber of high-end camps and lodges in five African countries.

The camp itself is made up of the main lodge with lux­u­ry Pavil­lion Rooms on either side of the lodge fac­ing a dried lake bed with a water­ing hole in front of a deck. Dur­ing the rainy sea­son, the lake is full, dur­ing the dry sea­son it hosts a parade of all kinds of ani­mals com­ing to drink or wallow.

We had five Pavil­lion Rooms that includ­ed a bed­room, sit­ting room, ful­ly stocked bar, deck, pool, dress­ing room and bath­room with an indoor as well as an out­door show­er. Recent­ly refur­bished every­thing was mod­ern, except the roof was thatched (wood ceil­ings in rooms). When the ear­ly morn­ing wake-up calls (knock on the door) start the baboons would jump from roof to roof mak­ing a huge racket.

The rou­tine at Chief’s camp was a six A.M. wake up call, break­fast buf­fet with served entres to order, morn­ing game dri­ve leav­ing at sev­en A.M. with a cof­fee break in the bush mid-morn­ing then return to the camp for a sit down served lunch from the menu. The after­noon game dri­ve left at three P.M. with cock­tails served in the bush around sun­down and the return to the lodge for more cock­tails and din­ner served from the menu. The food, wine, cock­tails, ser­vices were first class and the staff was extreme­ly friend­ly and well trained includ­ing the two dri­vers, track­er, guides assigned to our group.

Our first full day at Chiefs Camp starts off with an African sun­rise then an incred­i­ble leop­ard pho­to op. A male and female, thought to be broth­er and sis­ter were fin­ish­ing off their impala kill. The male was eat­ing but the female was pos­ing and what a job she did.

We then get treat­ed to an Ele­phant show, first at the water­ing hole while hav­ing lunch in camp, then lat­er out in the bush.

We enjoy view­ing a num­ber of addi­tion­al species in addi­tion to the ele­phants in the after­noon. includ­ing a Baboon perched on top of a ter­mite mound to scan for predators.

Thurs­day was our last full day at Chief’s camp and it turned out to be a full one which includes, a Hye­na fam­i­ly and Rhi­no pho­to op in the morn­ing along with some oth­er inter­est­ing species.

When it was time to return to camp for lunch we had a sur­prise. The chef and staff had set up a stir fry to order lunch, of course with a bar, in the bush.

Tomor­row we will fly on to Singita.

Joyce and I decide to have a leisure­ly morn­ing as every­one else decides to take one last game dri­ve on the way to the airstrip for our flight in the same King Air that brought us. It’s cool and we have break­fast with our fam­i­ly then see them off. We say our good­byes to the won­der­ful Chiefs Camp staff, then are dri­ven to the airstrip for our flight. It’s a short flight to Maun to clear cus­toms out of Botswana, but this time they decide to do it the hard way and it takes us an hour and a half because they inspect every bag. We con­tin­ue the hour and forty-five-minute flight land­ing at San­gi­ta lodge where we are met by our guides and track­ers. Our Host­ess wel­comes us to our com­pound, our chef has pre­pared lunch and we still leave for the after­noon game dri­ve at three-thir­ty. We come upon a small heard of Rhi­nos wal­low­ing in a water hole with both Black and White species, which is an impres­sive start. We then view some ele­phants and start to get the lay of the Sin­gi­ta land.

The first evening we join the oth­er lodge guests at the main lodge for a bar­beque. We are intro­duced to the excel­lent Sin­gi­ta wine col­lec­tion, and a won­der­ful meal cooked over the fire. We are then enter­tained by the local tribe who per­form a tra­di­tion­al dance, that includes par­tic­i­pa­tion by some of our fam­i­ly. It was a very aus­pi­cious start to our stay at Singita.

Sin­gi­ta Ebony Lodge is the orig­i­nal loca­tion in the 19 lodge San­gi­ta col­lec­tion of top-end lux­u­ry “camps.” The pri­vate prop­er­ty is set with­in the 160,500-acre Sabi Sands Game Reserve adja­cent to Kruger Nation­al Park in north­east­ern South Africa. San­gi­ta Ebony Lodge sits on a bluff over­look­ing the Sands Riv­er, where we had a two-fam­i­ly suite (four bed­rooms) plus com­mon area and a sep­a­rate suite for Joyce and me. Our sep­a­rate com­pound had its own Host­ess, Chef, serv­ing staff and we had two track­ers and two guides assigned to look after us. The main lodge was a five-minute walk away.  Our rou­tine was to rise at six A.M. have a light break­fast and leave on the game dri­ve at sev­en. We would stop around nine A.M. for cof­fee, cocoa or tea, and a bis­cuit, then con­tin­ue our morn­ing game dri­ve. We then would have a large breakfast/brunch around eleven and then relax or par­tic­i­pate in activ­i­ties until three P.M. We then would leave for the after­noon game dri­ve, stop for a glass of wine or cock­tail before return­ing to our lodge, where we would have a gourmet din­ner pre­pared by our chef after cock­tails. Sin­gi­ta is one of the biggest buy­ers of pre­mi­um wines in South African and they served out­stand­ing wines at every oppor­tu­ni­ty. Our Track­ers and Guides were superb and became part of the fam­i­ly quickly.

The word was that a lion pride had killed a Cape Buf­fa­lo next to Kruger Game Reserve, so we head­ed there first thing in the morn­ing. We were not dis­ap­point­ed. The pride was still feed­ing on the sec­ond day with the dom­i­nate male doing the eat­ing with two cubs and the moth­er and oth­er females still there.

We crossed the riv­er each day on our game dri­ve and saw the more aquat­ic species at the crossing.

The after­noon dri­ve serves up a big vari­ety of species.

A great day of game view­ing and enjoy­ing San­gi­ta incred­i­ble ameni­ties and hospitality.

Sun­day turned out to be a leop­ard high­light day. In the morn­ing our amaz­ing track­er Vusi spot­ted a lone leop­ard in a dense bush, it then decid­ed to pose for us. In the after­noon we fol­lowed a male as he walked along the river­bank near our camp. In the evening, again our track­er spot­ted a female near our camp who had killed an ante­lope and had hye­nas steal the kill. When we came upon the scene the hye­nas were fight­ing over the kill, and we pro­vid­ed enough dis­trac­tion for the leop­ard to steal back part of the kill. With a few more inter­est­ing ani­mals to pho­to­graph it was quite a day.

Tomor­row will be our last day and as usu­al, Our Sin­gi­ta Host, Chef and Staff pre­pare a great din­ner, with great wine to cel­e­brate a great trip.

We were nine­ty per­cent packed and had our nor­mal six A.M. wake up call and sev­en A.M. depar­ture for our last game dri­ve. One of the nat­u­ral­ists had spot­ted a lone male lion so that was our chal­lenge for the morn­ing. Vusi our track­er picked up the tracks on a road and start­ed track­ing on foot in the bush and we cir­cled to try to inter­cept our quar­ry. We soon spot­ted a mag­nif­i­cent young male trav­el­ing fast. The ear­ly morn­ing sun was low and behind the lion but we still man­aged to cap­ture some halfway decent images of this mag­nif­i­cent creature.

As we head­ed back to camp we stopped to pho­to­graph two Zebra who turned to say good­bye as we leave this incred­i­ble place. We enjoyed one last Sin­gi­ta lunch, then fin­ished pack­ing and head­ed for the airstrip. Our flight was a lit­tle over an hour and we checked back into the Inter­con­ti­nen­tal where we had a day room. Lunch, show­er and relax until our eight P.M. fif­teen-hour flight to Atlanta. We cleared cus­toms and then caught our last flight to our home air­ports. We all arrived home before noon on Tues­day, July 23. Enjoy­ing two fab­u­lous loca­tions, unbe­liev­able hos­pi­tal­i­ty and unfor­get­table safari expe­ri­ence with our fam­i­ly is a trip of a life­time. We will be shar­ing mem­o­ries for months and years to come.

Spring Island from the Cottage

The fam­i­ly start­ed gath­er­ing at the Chechessee cot­tage on the Mon­day before Thanks­giv­ing with Jen­nifer, Mike, and Alexan­dra arriv­ing from Flori­da. Tues­day Caitlin and Kin­sey arrived with Gil and Joyce and Hei­di, Gary and Brenn com­plet­ed the gath­er­ing Thanks­giv­ing morn­ing. Thanks­giv­ing day was typ­i­cal with lots of activ­i­ties, start­ing with some work­ing out at Spring Island, games, cook­ing, eat­ing, addi­tion­al games, foot­ball watch­ing, more eat­ing, more games, talk­ing, relax­ing, more eat­ing, more cook­ing, giv­ing Thanks and then feast­ing. It was a great Thanks­giv­ing day sur­round­ed by sev­er­al days of fam­i­ly fun.

Black Fri­day activ­i­ties start­ed with exer­cise for every­body with some head­ing to the gym and oth­ers enter­ing the 5K at Spring Island. Once that was done we resumed the eat­ing, games, foot­ball watch­ing Mis­souri won big, and there was some shop­ping. Gary left to coach his foot­ball team, who are in the play­offs. All but Gary went to the Oys­ter Roast at Spring Island for dinner.

Christ­mas week­end start­ed with Caitlin and Kin­sey com­ing to Hilton Head on Thurs­day, with Hei­di hav­ing out­pa­tient surgery done Fri­day. Fri­day Jen­nifer, Mike and Alexan­dra arrived in the evening from Flori­da. Sat­ur­day morn­ing Jen­nifer orga­nized the tra­di­tion­al gin­ger­bread house bak­ing and con­struc­tion and there as lots of oth­er hol­i­day bak­ing. Kin­sey declared that her gin­ger­bread house was hit by hur­ri­cane Math­ew, Caitlin’s was stur­dy and nice but the prize went to Alexan­dra for pret­ti­est house (pic­tured below).  Ear­ly Sat­ur­day after­noon we all trav­eled to the Chechessee cot­tage and to our sur­prise Hei­di was there recov­er­ing. Gary and Brenn arrived Christ­mas eve morn­ing. Christ­mas eve was spent play­ing games, watch­ing col­lege foot­ball, enjoy­ing each oth­ers com­pa­ny, capped off by a fine dinner.

Christ­mas morn­ing the excite­ment was high and yes San­ta had deliv­ered lots of gifts. There was lots of hap­pines, but the high­light was Brenn shed­ding tears of joy when he opened his tick­ets to the Col­lage Foot­ball Nation­al Cham­pi­onship game. We all teared up and it capped off a great morn­ing. We then had a big Christ­mas brunch then every­one enjoyed their gifts and social­ized. In the after­noon we watched the San Fran­cis­co 49ers pull off an impres­sive win over the Jaguars who were favored. We then enjoyed a tra­di­tion­al prime rib Christ­mas din­ner. We spent Box­ing day doing more fam­i­ly things, with some shop­ping, work­ing out and play­ing with new toys, before Gary and Mike arrived with Bar­be­cue din­ner. The Prado’s went back to Savan­nah on Wednes­day and Mont­gomery’s to Fort Laud­erdale on Thurs­day. It was a great fam­i­ly Christmas.