BOTSWANA TRAVEL DOCUMENTARY | 4x4 Safari Road Trip feat. Victoria Falls

what's mana a country known as one of the best safari destination students abundance of wildlife but there is so much more to discover follow us on our four-wheel-drive adventure for remarkable our travels in Botswana started in the far north as we were entering chobe national park coming from Namibia instead of taking the tar road through the park we decided to go for the adventure of the choba riverfront track the Chobe River front of a summer put Suarez premier wildlife feed within a short time frame we spotted large herds of impalas a game of sea prize with a very young foal a water bar resting a shadow and an enormous group of pelicans hundreds of them shared a small stretch of the river moving and feeding in unison congregating in such large numbers has the benefit of being more protected from predators one of the animals praying when swimming pelicans is the Nile crocodile these scaly reptiles are masters at hiding even in shallow water however they can often be seen basking in the Sun along the river side a sea precaution the river could be a welcome meal for these crocodiles elephants on the other hand are in no danger an important role in life's of many animals place the oxpecker who cleans ticks from anybody who are just packing [Music] the tracks along the Toba riverfront can be quite adventurous with many animals crossing the park while driving it is always a good idea to have a close look at the bushes that way anything from burbot monkeys to cute little lion cubs could be hiding them sometimes it might even be a large hippo happily chewing on dry cross upon seeing the sunset cruises on the river we thought this looked like a splendid idea the next afternoon we embarked on our own it did not take us long to find a group of elephants close to the water's edge Shobha National Park is famous for its large amount of elephants and the riverfront is where they like to gather here they can happily feed on juicy crusts [Music] it is also perfect sparing crowd for young elephants who play fight against each other these two were really having a go at it which apparently concerned an older elephant he went in between the two to stop the fight this did not concern the young ones very much as they promptly started fighting behind his back again and another animal that appreciates the same habitat as the African buffalo which tends to congregate in large numbers smaller and therefore harder to spot are the monitor lizards that live in this ecosystem but most of all we had come for the hippos that dwell in the river [Music] [Music] sudden slowly setting all the boats headed back and calls it a day [Music] we just made it to some barber because we're driving to Victoria Falls and the bureaucracy was a little bit more intense on this side it was a little bit of chaos really felt like Africa that wood cars and lorries parked everywhere I was bailing a path to go through but then there were people friendly enough to help us to to find the right place to sign different books and to get all the permits that I needed and then once you're at the gate it's essentially just a beam that is open and closed so that's the entire border gate but we had to fill out another registration form and I almost stole the tip of the pen from the guy very interesting border crossing definitely a little bit of adventure filter at Victoria Falls the mighty Zambezi River trops into a gorge that is 1.7 kilometers wide [Applause] with Victoria Falls is not a single waterfall but rather Northumberland force at its highest Victoria Falls stands at 108 meters which combined with its wit by surprise it as one of the two largest waterfalls in the world being only rivaled by iguazu falls in south america all shared between the countries of Zambia and Zimbabwe with many people arguing that the better the user from the Zimbabwean side on the other hand you can only go and take a plunge in Devil's pool on the sand the inside of the forea falls and about when we are literally barding here delicious so much water flying up I mean it is called the Thunder that rain so that name kind of makes sense a lot here because we are just wetted about the spray of water is immense at some points keeping in mind that this is the Troy season you can well imagine how much rain there would be in the wet season there are several view points along the waterfall all offering a different perspective especially intriguing was the view point at the main course which gave us a rainbow as a bonus further there is another great viewpoint affording a look into the gorge this spot is only suitable for people without vertigo as you are directly on the cliff edge looking down into the turbulence amazing River and we decided that the usually crowd level wasn't enough for us and therefore took a helicopter flight the next morning it didn't take us long to be airborne in only about one minute the deeply cut Gorge of the Sambhaji river came into sight the view from the air is breathtaking on another level as you can see the entire width of the falls at once [Music] after only 13 minutes and two circles above the falls we headed back but it was without a doubt a memorable experience back in Botswana we trove south towards the big salt pens in the centre of the country along the highway we came upon several control bushfires ruining the grass but leaving the rest of the landscape xscape something like this makes us really mad but Savannah is such a beautiful country with a lot of wildlife and beautiful nature and a lot of ecotourism but then we're driving along the roadside here and there's literally just garbage thrown everywhere is like a huge garbage time just alongside the road with glass bottles lying around with a lot of plastic just flying through the landscape it is just very disappointing seeing this and comparing it to the beautiful nature that is all around us we were very happy when we left the highway for the bush store it's another trade or a depends more than a hundred kilometers of sand and dust lay between us and our destination kudu island in several hours of driving we met a total of two other cops faces the wilderness we came to Africa [Music] landscape in this part of Botswana is very flat and mostly covered in grass with a couple of bushes and trees he and they of course the high crosses perfect for Steambox to hide him just before sunset we reached Kubo island which is a rocky outcrop with majestic baobab trees crying on it these trees are easily a couple of hundred years old while some specimen have reached an age of more than 2,000 years they are true survival specialists storing large amounts of water in their trunks our webs come in all shapes and sizes and more often than not look quite comical the fruit of the tree is a popular snack among animals cuckoo island directly borders on a large salt flat in an area usually referred to as Makgadikgadi beds we decided that we wanted to explore more of it we took a route that led us directly through one of them driving across the salt flats is fairly easy in the dry season but extremely treacherous when it has rained visitors are encouraged to stay on the main track as the ecosystem is rather fragile not everybody sticks to the rules though [Music] not many animals can survive in this epic elliptic landscape one that is quite well adapted is the ostrich of course whereas many of the tracks are dry and hard they are some softer parts which are extremely dusty [Music] it is hard to imagine the sheer amount of dust flying up behind the car and finding its way into the inside [Applause] [Music] just walking on the surface will cover your lower legs completely in dust and dirt at the end of the day the entire car was clouded and it took us some time to clean it after several hours of driving we reached our next destination which was the so called Queens barb up the tree carries many a signature from past travelers not far away the remains of Chapman's barber can be found sleeping it's definitely not something for somebody who is afraid of dirt or dust because invariably at some point you will get very very dirty and very dusty as you can tell climbing along the car after you've troubled through extremely sand extremely dusty roads just leads to the fact that you're covered in dirt from top to bottom really but at the end of the day or rather at the beginning of the day if you can get to places and enjoy these kind of views it is all worth it although it is hard to find any animals of most parts of the landscape as soon as one gets near water the chances are increasing close to a waterhole we camp on this group of elephants which made good use of the moist nut although these clumps of mud are not quite as effective in covering their skin as dust these elephant's patiently continued in this part of botswana the temperatures can easily rise to over 40 degrees celsius which is rather hard to cope with without an air conditioning after all these dry landscapes we were quite happy to arrive in the Okavango Delta it is a great fool buy for trail system feeding through marae me Game Reserve with plenty of chances for exploration the game reserve covers much of the eastern side of the Okavango Delta and combines a permanent water source with drier areas Marais me is one of the prime safari destinations in Botswana and it is easy to see why the diversity in wildlife is immense many species are easy to observe without a professional guy [Music] ramie Game Reserve is also well suited for the adventurous traveler as it can only be accessed by former home there are many deep sand tracks which can offer a row I lied was without a doubt there's several little bridges along the way these preachers are constructed with unsecured Levani tree trunks which freely move around when you drive through them our favorite spot was third bridge where mine approach was combined with the crossing of award when we were in the Caprivi strip we bought a traditional instrument called a hippo collar and this is a very simple tool just wood on the outside the cow skin on the top and a bamboo stick in the middle but the real magic happens if you put some water on your hand and then rub the bamboo stick because this mimics the sound of a hippo who is happy as it has found nice and sweet cross and the effect of this is that hippos in the water are reacting to it they are coming closer to the shore and they have been coming a lot closer to us at the beginning they were on either sides of this little lake or this little Lagoon but now they are just in front of us wanting the fresh cross being a lot of fun to use the hippo caller brought us a lot of good results almost every waterhole at every little stream is inhabited by hippos in the Okavango Delta most of the day they stay underneath the water surface with just a bit of their heads popping out hippo is tend to live in groups sometimes with up to 40 or 50 individuals an adult hippo is quite a massive animal easily weighing one and a half tonnes territorial fights among males are nothing uncommon as the deep scars on this hip whose back showed the teeth can easily reach lengths of 50 centimeters they are frequently shown during their characteristic yawns which are quite a spectacle to observe similar to other animals they are quite happy to use the oxpecker service with all these streams it is always a good idea to check the water depth before driving through them with longer stretches it is often hard to touch but walking through them is not recommended sometimes the only option is to hope it is not as deep as it looks if something goes wrong there's certainly somebody waiting eagerly for a snack while Moremi offers many wet and flooded areas it is also home to some woodlands with enough time and patience there's a good chance of spotting some forest trellis very small and how to spot a thwart Mongoose eleven families are up to 30 animals and can usually be seen foraging for insects on the forest floor at least one animal of the group is always perched a bit higher to skin the area for predators a close relative to the dwarf Mongoose is the slender me goose some are the forest areas show that it has been a long dry season with the foliage looking like autumn this is without a doubt the wildest campsite we've ever been to earlier the day there was an elephant standing in our campsite right here and it was walking around the other campsites as well later at night there was an entire herd of elephant walking around just just a couple minutes ago there were two lines walking right in front of us less than 20 meters away they are hippos calling a hundred meters away and the point it is just incredibly wild here and a beautiful wedged between morenae game Rossano french / national park was a small area called which arguably offers some of the best scenery in all of what's one with plenty of water and fresh cream trois this area is a favorite among water bucks water bucks are AA large shaggy antelopes that live in herds of Sixth and 30 animals [Music] they have characteristic white fur rings on their back ends which are useful as orientation when they are fleeing from predators male water buck also sport massive horns which are used in territorial fights the area is equally popular among large herds of buffaloes who come to the river to drink similarily many birds such as the lilac breasted roller the settle build stalk the African long-tailed trike wattled cranes be African Hoople the yellow-billed horn boom and the Pete Kingfisher can be observed Krystal highlighted on the choir River with this young elephant boys going for a swim with these scorching temperatures we could imagine how refreshing this part must attain for for young males it didn't stay peaceful for long but why not has also offer it's painful surprises when I packed up the rooftop 10 this morning I stepped down the stairs and immediately felt a searing pain in my right foot it turns out I stepped into a very thorny branch and it went straight into my foot not so pleasant later at night we also had the luck to spot this nocturnal survive ket close to our campsite the next morning we started out before sunrise and were immediately rewarded by spotting a lioness casually walking along our path shortly afterwards we came upon our first honey badger honey badgers are usually nocturnal as well this one was apparently still hungry as it was actively forging on the ground a little later our day got even better when we came upon this male ID and southern Joba National Park it clearly is no fan of all the thorns either the early morning sunlight looked magically as he paraded along it seems he was still a little bit tired though [Music] although we drove all the way up to savuti in the centre of Java National Park we didn't see much more as everything was very dry it was then time to leave the wire leverage areas for the vast and lonely west of Botswana for several hundred kilometres we drove through virtually uninhabited landscapes our destination was with all the hours spent trying as it is one of its finest wildest and most remote sites it is called by harbor keven's there's northern and a southern entrance to this cave system with the former being a bit easier to access through free stairs inside the caves we soon came upon fascinating stalactites and stalagmites the exploration of these caves is only for intrepid travelers there is nobody taking care or registering your entry in fact there's nobody near within a 50 kilometer radius we were quite alone in these dark caves or maybe not we are just exploring this cave system we can really scare lighting with all flashlights and then something moved in flew towards us and it turns out they are thousands of plants hanging the little crevices above us and they are moving from time to time some people are flying around usually they feed at nighttime but apparently due to the fact that we are open for you some of them just smoke up and it's quite fascinating just watching them and they're emitting these little sounds high-pitched noises probably communicating with one another it's just a very a fascinating thing to be riding these little dense horseshoe bets are only seven centimetres long and weigh a mere six grams they prefer to live in caves and groups of hundreds of animals soon after that we also came upon Egyptians split faced bats which are slightly larger they appreciated our presence a lot less as many of them started to fly around as we approached we then decided to explore the caves a little bit more we searched for more than three hours for the connection between the two entrances we tried our best even crawling through narrow passageways but to no avail we have now explored both the northern entrance and the southern entrance but we just couldn't find the connection between the two apparently in the past there was a rope connecting both but it's not there anymore and at one point there was a two meter drop so we decided to call it a day and leave with the memories we have instead of getting lost somewhere in the cave system but definitely what a memorable place a little while later we watched a local football match and soon found that the border fence with Namibia the track first seemed all right but soon became horribly over ground after many kilometers on sandy tracks we thought that we could make up some time on the highway that did not work out as planned but swine offers a great variety of poor wheel drive tracks but if you think that the off-roading stops when the tar Road starts you're mistaken have a look at this road this is one of the major highways of the country and it is littered with potholes that are sometimes 20 to 30 centimeters D it took us longer than expected but we still reached our destination at cedilla Hills a place of many great rock paintings together with our local guide we went on the Rhino trail to explore the area these hills of trade cultural and spiritual significance to the Sun people those people students people and the tribe of those people were the key yeah those people that painted this paint is using hematite choco concrete and Moffat URI and also planner so here's the zebra as you can see it is not completely down but it was on here is the jackal here is the Coogee and the baby could you and the lines that you see is the lines that shows that they were using the fingers to paint they are fingers to paint and here is the giraffe as you can see the non neck here the next legs and the chain which is the trap then here is the world stock the Steinbach the baby event and the Maha the odd rope and the geometric design the geometric design we used by the measurement in specific Hill English works there is a great amount of paintings in the area some are more faded while others are clearly discernible some were quite easy to recognize while others were more abstract such as this penguin our guide also showed us an old game still play today we then spend one last night at the Okavango River which we saw for the first time since the movie yeah always eager for new adventures we decided to also cross the Aachen angle on an old and rickety Harry this ferry is the only way to get to the eastern side of the Okavango in botswana the state of the wheelhouse did not necessarily inspire trust and neither did the life rings nor whatever this kind of plastic bottle was useful but that was just the adventure we had come to Botswana at least the engines were working fine and so we slowly made our way across the river we arrived on the other side of the Okavango ironically once on the other side we didn't get to see the river again for 50 kilometers so we turned around and headed back to the ferry on our way south towards the Kalahari we spend one more night illumise camping in a truly magnificent spot [Music] [Applause] [Music] the Kalahari Desert is not limited to a single National Park in Botswana but rather covers the entire southern part of the country one protected area as the central Kalahari Game Reserve which were decided to have a closer look right at the start we had the luck to spot this funny duo generally this area seems to be a favorite amongst teen books of which we saw many it was our first time spotting a young Steve mundo which was truly tiny we proudly present you but swather steepest pothole have a look at this the central Kalahari Game Reserve is a very try place dominated by cross shrubs and the occasional pin in comparison to the Okavango Delta not as many animals can be spotted but with a little bit of patience there's a good chance of seeing Springboks kudos bull the Beast and Oryx they especially tend to congregate among the few water halls of the park eagerly sharing a drink and low vegetation also allowed us to look further into the distance so that we spotted our first bat-eared foxes [Music] mariette foxes usually forage in pairs looking for food which they locate using their large ears surprisingly their diet is eighty to ninety percent insects most of the landscapes look fairly similar in the park with the exception of this plaque pen which really stood out there's one small on our site when we came upon a pack of wild dogs while dogs are among the most threatened mammals in Africa with only a few thousand left they are highly skilled predators hunting in packs of 5 to 15 animals chasing their prey until it collapses from exhaustion [Music] although they are formidable hunters themselves they sometimes fall prey to lions [Music] when exploring the Kalahari one should be prepared for a lot of driving on sandy tracks often limiting the speech to 30 kilometres an hour going faster could easily end in a catastrophe often we've been doing on the go I did and it turns out from now on it is driving in the night we did with several hundred kilometers to go we didn't have a choice but to push on the only good thing that came of this ordeal was that we spotted a spring here a funny rabbit hopping around like a kangaroo last one we finally arrived at camp early the next morning we were back on track driving into the deep south west of Botswana the sandy tracks were a lot of fun and a struggle from the night before was soon forgotten our destination was Tagalog Rd trans frontier park a national park that unites wilderness from Botswana and South Africa characteristic filbert's one inside of the park are red coloured sandy 4x4 trails traversing pristine landscapes along the trails froze mainly cross and a lot of thorny bushes typically for the Kalahari they are also a number of tribe hands striking is the amount of Romans that seem to rise out of nobly a traverse depends and usually lose all their momentum as soon as they reach the edge of the way the dry ground is very popular among African grounds crows which can often be seen foraging for roots seeds and insects they have very round faces and bushy tails which makes it easy to distinguish them from another grant dweller the Mia get many consider Mike heads to be one of the cutest animals and it is hard to disagree meerkats are always vigilant continuously scanning the sky for predators [Music] after a long day of beautiful soundtracks we reached our campsite where we will welcome to buy several horn boots these birds are very common in southern Africa living in a range of habitats they are inquisitive and tend to be a rather unafraid of humans they are two different subspecies of hornbill and southern Africa the red-billed hornbill and the yellow-billed wampum with the letter being the more common hornbills tend to be crowned tolling during the day foraging for food and diet consists of anything ranging from insects to fruits and also geckos [Music] the Setting Sun provided these birds with a beautiful backdrop while they were turning over sand and search of insects and seats we watched him until the Sun had set and the chatter of the birds was replaced by the sound of The Barking geckos the next day brought us a South African part of the park where we spotted also larger animals among those was a female Springbok with her freshly born young we also managed to get a glimpse of the famous black maned Kalahari heights we explore town for many more hours in the box wine inside driving on beautiful red sand tracks and thinking to ourselves that this is an underrated precious of Botswana the same applies to an area just north of the park called car Kalahari concession area this region is just as wild and lonely as the rest of the Kalahari with beautiful open savanna landscapes and wide open pants we knew that this would be our last night in the true wilderness so we wistfully watched the sunset we made ourselves a nice campfire enjoyed our loneliness together and watched the millions of stones from our heads [Music] the next morning we pack down the rooftop tent and drove back towards civilization Botswana this was a fabulous ride with memories that will last a lifetime we learned the value of pristine nature animals that are wild and free-roaming in their natural habitats living perfectly fine without human interference it is worth protecting these habitats so that future generations can marvel at everything our world has to offer [Music]

Channel: Lucas T. Jahn

Views: 3,089,102

Keywords: Lucas, Jahn, roadtrip, adventure, wanderlust, travel, safari, road, trip, Botswana, Southern Africa, Chobe National Park, River front, Kasane, Victoria Falls, Simbabwe, Makgadikgadi Pans, Kubu Island, Lekhubu Island, Green's Baobab, Okavango Delta, Moremi Game Reserve, Third Bridge, Gcwihaba Caverns, Tsodillo Hills, Okavango River, Kalahari, Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, namibia, south africa, elephant, lion, 4x4, asco car hire

Id: HXSHzfrc5ZY

Length: 38min 24sec (2304 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 26 2019