Patience reaps rewards

Leopard images by Tom Varley

Camping in the some of the best national parks in Botswana has great benefits. We woke up one morning on safari to find that there was a dead impala just a few metres from one of the tents. The tracks around the carcass were that of a leopard. Great excitement rushed through the camp, clients clambering for binoculars and cameras, urgent requests to track the leopard to find it…

Sometimes as a safari guide you have to be firm and advise clients clamouring for instant gratification of a leopard sighting that this is not the best thing to do. My instructions to the clients were clear: we go about our business as usual, checking on the carcass from time to time from a distance, letting the leopard get used to us. The next morning, there was great anticipation in the air as the carcass had been dragged a few metres from our campsite to the base of a large tree. Again, I had to calm the clients and dissuade them from getting too close to the kill. On the third morning, we looked for the carcass but it was not there. We looked up into the tree and there was the leopard finally having its meal. For the next 48 hours we had our own private sighting of a beautiful male leopard feeding on his kill as if we were not there.

Read more about the region in our destination guide:
Okavango

Read more articles from this issue:
Zambezi Traveller (Issue 14, Sept 2013)