Savuti Chobe National Park Overlanding Self Drive Adventure Dry Season. ROAM Overlanding Ep3

welcome to another wild episode of Rome over Landing today we say goodbye to our new friends Louis and Clara and officially enter the chobi national park making our way to savouti where we plan to explore the Park's sites all while dealing with some challenges and taking in the Majestic Wilderness of the area so join us for our next Amazing Adventure foreign [Music] to begin the final leg of our journey into the chobi national park and eventually to kasani leaving mahoto is bittersweet it's an amazing place but the famed savouti lies ahead famous for its incredible animal sightings this series of Rome over Landing is proudly brought to you by the power of riddock and supported by Garmin and in part by Bush Tech aluminum canopies easy on worth and cross-country Insurance consultants and compendium insurance brokers [Music] we awoke to a really special sighting the wild dogs we had been looking for the other day were right in front of us and visible from our camp they had been separated and were looking for a way to get across the river to another part of their pack these intelligent and endangered creatures are also known as the African painted dog good morning we found ourselves here at Kwai mahoto Camp alongside the choir River and we are packing up and heading through to savuti today but we have had amazing sightings to wake up to we've had some wild dog right across from our rooftop tents in the river beautiful sightings our Dutchy friends that We rescued in the previous episode Louis and Clara they gifted us a trap camera which we set up in the camp last night we saw leopard and hyena in our camp as well but yeah very very exciting we're going to be saying goodbye to them today we managed to get in touch with the Toyota in maun through satellite communication on our little Garmin inreach and they are heading through today to come and help Louis and Clara out so that they will be back on their Adventure soon so that's awesome I'm glad we managed to help them it was awesome to have a day spend a day together have a nice ride together last night and yeah we can now move onwards and upwards towards savuti foreign [Music] it was uh turned out to be way more special than what I anticipated it to be in and job what what a place absolutely absolutely the game really did just come to us and come and come and see us I mean even those wild dogs this morning as a special spot this welcome to mahoto and you have an elephant in your camp yeah it was uh it was really really stunning um our challenge for this morning is to try and follow the choir River as far as we can because we just aren't quite ready to leave it behind yet good sighting morning with the wild dogs and we have to turn it back a little bit it's not easy I don't mind what's the book easy [Music] weather [Applause] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] this really is a very unique kind of landscape to drive through because you one second you're driving through this Tall Grass Savannah and then all of a sudden there's this green marshy river right next to you beautiful it's a nice little juxtaposition between the dry and the Green Vibrance [Music] see it looks like there was a herd of buffalo something came through here there's a lot of dung on the ground all throughout this area we did hear from the duchies that they saw a big herd of buffalo the day that they drove in so it might be a better correspondence between that [Music] we are making good progress and soon we will be making our way to the main Transit Road to savouti [Music] all right [Music] so our initial plan to follow the river as far as possible is ended up at a dead end it looks like this road just continues into just mud hole after mud hole after mud hole and we actually see on the map it actually says it's a no access road so we're gonna head back to the cut line now but we put some pies in the oven and it's been a beautiful drive so definitely not regretting taking this route but we're going to take the more traditional route into cebuti now [Music] [Music] we have some fellow South Africans showing us a bit of a route up to the Transit Road this is not on the GPS or on tracks for Africa or anything this is just one that they've found this route themselves as well but it seems to be a nice well-used road so at least we're tracking it for you know if we ever come back I don't know why all the trees are dead like this but if you know let us know down in the comments because there seemed to be so many sections throughout this area where all these trees are dead we have a sneaky suspicion it's because maybe they get too much water in the wet season and they end up drowning or something but yeah I don't know let us know [Music] [Applause] [Music] one thing we are learning about Transit roads in these parts of Botswana is that they might be faster but they are just as hard on your vehicle as the of the Beaten Track Parts but it felt good to at least get the vehicles over 10 kilometers an hour because we have some serious distance to cover today and we have no guarantee of the road conditions ahead foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] National Park we're in the savouti section we've just come through the mababi gate and now we've got to choose do we go the Marsh Road or the Sand Ridge Road I'm feeling like we're really enjoying the Sandy roads today so maybe we'll take the Sandy road we were warned by fellow Travelers that the path ahead was going to be rough on the vehicles but we laughed it off and continued on the first part of the Sand Ridge Road was absolutely fine but all of a sudden the last 20 kilometers to savuti turned into a suspension test of note and basically made any filming impossible the road out here is hectic really putting the suspension through its Paces that's for sure let's check how hot they are the shocks let's do a little inspection on everything those shocks are freaking hot can't even hold the shock it is cooking cooking cooking let's see how's it going ruffy the suspension is working extremely hard but extremely hard you don't understand that there is no road that I've driven in my life that works a suspension like a threat it is crazy full extension of the suspension all the time the whole time it is bad it is bad and it's hot at the moment so the ambient temperature is high that burnsbury oh no these are doing really well uh we're stopping for a little bit of a lunch break let the shocks cool down a bit but this is very very rough and we heavily loaded so I mean it's to be expected to be putting these guys Under Pressure but that's all we actually had to do test it in the toughest conditions and um yeah so far so good getting closer and closer to the camp all of a sudden mountains and baobabs start popping out of the Endless Seas of grasslands and mapani it was getting more and more dense as we slowly approached [Music] so looks like Ralphie's might have a puncture let's get out and check quick how's it looking flat we're almost left but it's definitely got a punch her do you want to try and get to the camp it's just there or do you wanna the thing we can get to level ground maybe a good idea okay let's see what I think the puncture seems quite slow so by inflating this tire we can get to a More Level ground just up ahead and change or plug the tire much easier luckily the reception was a couple hundred meters away [Music] uh that's irritating yeah but I think it's because I miss everything with a front tire yeah and then because the back tire is flipping narrower the back tire on the inside just wraps okay it's time to get to work that means the worth tools come out of play [Music] by no means is an impact driver necessary doing a tire change but it works well for us as a team because we have varying size wheel nuts across our vehicles so with our socket set in the toolbox we can easily do a variety of changes with just one tool just remember never to use an impact driver to tighten your wheel nuts that's where a torque wrench comes in for precise talking of your wheel nuts for each vehicle's torque settings that is the nature of the Bush out here there's Circle bus and routes and all sorts of things hide away in the sand waiting for some unexpected Overlander to come driving by oh [Music] that was a unfortunate little Booboo but we picked up the puncture luckily rufi picked it up pretty quickly on there time pressure monitors so the engage strikes again but you're disappointing to lose a brand new tire to a stick irritating but on a positive note we have arrived at savouti we are about to rock up into our camp and suss it out we hear that the little uh shop that's got some firewood water and cokes and stuff like that opens from four to seven o'clock and we need a bit of a resupply on some things like such so um we'll go suss out the camp maybe put up the ground 10 so long and then we'll go uh see what's happening at the shop maybe go for a Sunset Drive before we pull back into camp but we'll we'll see we might just do a lot of game driving tomorrow have a big day of exploring around savouti [Music] exhausted after a long hot day we just quickly set up camp as fast as possible so we don't have to delay getting our hands on ice cold gnts and a good meal [Music] and now we can finally settle in for our first night in savouti so we've landed ourselves at our campsite it was super hot when we arrived so we just needed to sweat under a tree a little bit and settle ourselves in luckily there we go to the little shoppie they had some water and some Cokes and stuff it's quite expensive but we're in the middle of nowhere so Beggars can't be chooses are we doing a chicken flatty Rufus gonna do his famous 32nd chicken and we've got some boerewors and some stuff like that to do so should be really nice got a pot of veggies going and gin and tonic is about a get going so nice Vibe Seattle we're just gonna settle have a good nice chilled evening and tomorrow morning we are hitting the game drives hard [Music] okay not seen [Music] good morning our second day or so we say our official first day in savouti doesn't matter where we go we happen to bring cloudy and windy weather with us on this trip so luckily the wind only picked up at about four or five in the morning but it is pretty cloudy today so we're gonna have to do a lot of game driving to charge up our batteries and everything but that was the plan anyway so we packed up all the tents and everything we ready to go for a game Drive let's go and see what we see savouti actually covers quite a large part of the chobi national park and is full of little places to visit and plenty of game to see we have no idea where to begin so we are just picking a couple of random spots and we're gonna let the adventure unfold [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] Ty is very difficult so for the amount of time we wanted to spend here we actually have to book two different campsites So today we're going to be moving to a different Camp rsv3 which is closer to the ablutions seems like it's a bit nicer and a bit more open for us which is cool and so we'll see how that goes this afternoon thank you [Music] the weather isn't looking too great and with some rain starting to fall we set our sights for The Baobab gallery on route we're hoping to see some decent animal sightings but with weather like this you can never be too sure what you're going to see [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] big old Rumble and Rumble [Laughter] the lady at reception said they hadn't had any rain yet so even though we've been having rain there in the morami and Kauai they haven't had anything here at savouti so I mean obviously we brought this beautiful Moody weather with us yeah it's the Rome over Landing effect I think we're going to see some nice thunderstorms and some hopefully a bit of rain this landscape is very dry apparently it transforms pretty quickly once the first rains come through so they say within a couple of days to a week you'll see everything start going green already which is pretty crazy whether we'll see that or not I don't think so but it would be pretty awesome if we did so it's time to give a little bit of feedback on this tray setup and my number one absolute favorite thing is the slide out table and draw here it is so so good whenever we're stopping for lunch it comes out it's our basically our main little spot that we're using for everything what's brilliant with it is you don't have to pack your drawer away you can just access inside the drawer get your coffee get your boiler get all the stuff you need and you've got your work surface to work on it right away so it's been absolutely effortless it's definitely been a big favorite obviously having the trundle draw with the backyard with all of our tools and stuff which we have used way more than we anticipated on this trip has been awesome stuff like the air compressor and that and that box is there also great and now something that's very very cool is that when we get to camp and we've got our everything is loaded out the tents and all that stuff we've got a massive loading Bay here to be able to put other things so like now we're on a game drive right now so we've put clothing bags and a few little fiddly things that we didn't want to have to Lug around or leave at Camp so we've got that stuff in there so it actually gives us a nice amount of space to work with when you're at Camp as well just to put stuff that's been my favorite thing with the tray just having space to put stuff Bears always seem to Mark unique spots in Botswana like think of naipan national park with bainesboro Babs island kubu island and here in cebuti as well they have a mystical cultural Powers here in Botswana and you can see why people would believe that they are unbelievable unbelievable and right now this has been the first time I'm seeing baobabs outside of South Africa that are actually got a bit of green and these ones are even flowering which is really beautiful I don't think you're gonna see that too often so hopefully the rains a little bit of the rain today is going to help get these guys going even more but let's have a little walk around in a bit of an explore it is said that the Bushmen believed that if you pluck the flowers from a Baobab tree that you would be torn apart by lions because they are spirits in the flowers [Music] next on our list is to find the rock paintings we heard they were a bit tricky to find so we thought why not give it a chance anyway [Music] foreign which is responsible for filling the savouti marsh which has stayed dry for the past 18 years despite flooding further up the channel the mysterious nature of the safuti channel gives the area its name with savuti roughly translating to mystery it is said that tectonic plates shift allowing the water to flow back into the marsh but when this will happen again nobody quite knows it's time to send our trusty hiking Master Andy to blaze the trail ahead in search for the bush painting so we had a nice little look at the Rock paintings there and we've head back into the riverbed now to make our way back to Camp we're going to shift our campsite now and uh then have a probably do a bit of a lunch thing and see if we can figure out what's going on with the game drives around here see if we can get to some nice viewing points for this afternoon maybe even do a little bit of a 4x4 Mission up the Quarry Hill we'll see how everything goes we want to keep following the channel towards our camp because it feels like with the overcast weather we might just get a better chance to see some animals around here our gamble is paying off and we're sitting looking right at a young female elephant who seems to be hiding a little something behind her so cute is still learning how to use his trunk so like I'm watching him trying to put leaves in his mouth and he just can't get it right so he just goes and grabs the leaves from his mom's mouth but I think we'll back up and give them some room because they definitely seem a bit shy and look like they want to cross the channel [Music] the elephants around here are far more skittish than I've seen in other areas and I think that comes down to the fact that they are lions in savouti that prey on elephants particularly babies and even up to sub-adults which is pretty damn crazy [Music] foreign [Music] the sand is starting to get thick in this section and we've had plenty of fun for the morning so we're going to try and get back to Camp to swap campsites and get some lunch on the go [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] this one [Music] [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] a bit of a lazy afternoon at a nice lunch we just waited out the heat because it gets so so hot here so we just waited out the heat in the camp under the Shaded tree people had naps you know backed up some footage prepared some stuff for tonight for dinner and now we're just gonna go out for a nice little Sunset game Drive see what we can see before we come back and have a nice fry I made some fresh bread for us so we can bake that tonight and yeah got some lamb chops and a really nice feed a bit we still have pretty much no idea how the park is laid out so this drive is just to get out and explore a little bit and see what some of the watering holes look like and hopefully get some sightings [Music] foreign [Music] here we go we haven't seen Lions since marami and this is our first male lion of the trip [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] this is probably one of the most intense lion sightings I've seen it's beautiful to see them just the two of them just like this he's a big boy she's also pretty big they're in beautiful condition his Mane is muchastic it's awesome so so awesome we're gonna see maybe they're gonna meet hmm they seem to love each other quite a bit [Music] looks like he's not getting lucky today shy crowd shy looks like the shade is better than a meat literally as we're coming around the corner we find two lions lying in the middle of the main road back to camp it looks like they are getting ready to put on a bit of a show for us all nothing [Music] well spoiler alert they happened to put on a pretty lengthy show in an eight-part series dedicated to their love but in all honesty this is a pretty special experience to be a part of foreign [Music] was that epic yeah that was that was special that was cool I was that close to lions 10 years ago yeah but that was I think that's the civility magic oh yeah that's the severity magic no no absolutely are we gonna have a beer hmm I guess uh Saint Louis is in order there's no Saint Louis oh no but there's a red one okay well whatever beers beer [Music] foreign [Music] great day in Africa awesome thanks everybody after a full day of Adventure like today there is nothing like that first sip of beer while the smoke slowly fills the camp the tents pop-up and the sun begins to set now we rest and get ready to do it all again tomorrow [Music] and we're off to a start on another day in cebuti today is going to be one of those days where we're going to try and pack in as much game driving as possible we've got pies in the oven this morning for our mid-morning snack and Big Bertha is going to be cooking away while we are doing a bit of game viewing so I hope you will find a nice little stretch Point somewhere hop out and we can check on the little pies and see how they're doing but otherwise we want to get going hit the road let's see what animals we can find today we're heading to the cheetah Plains and hopefully see a cheetah but whatever we see we see after yesterday's sightings super stoked so at the moment it's now whatever we whatever we get we get and we'll be okay with it today we are heading to the cheetah Plains and the Rhino Flay some very impressive names so we had high hopes for our morning game Drive [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] with the vast open planes seeming awfully exposed out here it seems that the animals have retreated to the nearby tree line to escape the windy weather [Music] I think finding a spot to have a quick breakfast with a view of the planes would allow us a chance to get out to see if these cheetah planes would live up to its name I think with the Cloudy weather and the windy weather the animals are steering clear of the planes today so there's not too much activity going on the jet oil has actually worked really well I thought it was going to be a bit of a gimmicky product I've actually been pleasantly surprised how well it's been living up to its reputation since I bought mine foreign it's time to consult the garments and see just how we're going to finish our loop around the cheetah planes after exploring all of the dried up water holes in the South we decided to make our way back towards camp [Music] fuel reserves were starting to run low and my fuel budget for this morning's game Drive was up we stopped at one last watering hole and as we were leaving a herd of elephants came storming into the watering hole this moment just reminded us how truly vast this place is an elephant has to drink water every single day so these ilees must have been pretty thirsty so we haven't had the best day of game driving and stuff um so we decided to have a little bit of fun and go and see what the Quarry Hill little four by four trailers like so we're gonna make a make our way up uh Roofing needs to lock his hubs on the cruiser we're gonna see if we're gonna need low range I'm pretty sure he will seems to be marked as a steep Rocky climb so it should be fun [Music] that's a nice little climb got a koi low range and diff lock there and is quite steep we haven't done another flooring in a while let's see who's gonna come up now let's see how that Cruiser handles us should be a cakewalk [Music] [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] cheeky little rock crawling session I didn't see that coming eh personally I didn't expect it to be like a proper little 4x4 Trail behind the national park I wasn't didn't expect to see that but there we are hey awesome awesome awesome the Viewpoint is epic from up here we can really see the vastness of savouti endless Horizons all around in a couple weeks time this will probably all turn green once the rain starts to fall a sea of green with a few small rocky Islands poking out that would be something to see foreign [Music] it's amazing how this Baron burkani just turns into this green green green apple blush and arches and they don't mix you get the green patches on the mapani patches [Music] so we're just taking a slow little drive back to camp now hopefully squeeze in one last little bit of game viewing and then settle in for our last evening I think we've done a lot while we've been here but it would definitely be nice to have more time here there's a lot to explore there's a lot to see and I think you really you want to be here with full diesel tanks full camping fridges full everything we really on the tail end of our trip by now we were heading back to camp and decided to stop to see if our lion couple was still hanging around the water hole because we could hear them roaring all night last night and they are still hanging out making themselves very comfortable even with an audience of wildebeest watching [Music] thank you but there is someone new on the scene today another male lion looking at getting in on some of the action [Music] thank you [Music] foreign it looks like she isn't worth getting into a fight for today the couple then decided to find a spot with a bit more privacy to continue their festivity [Music] foreign stretch point I don't know maybe 250 300 meters away from where all those lines were and uh needless to say I think the magic of savouti kind of comes out when the Sun starts to set because all the lions not just lying next to the main road so and it must be a little bit of a mating season because they've been at it again today that's an awesome goodbye for savuti most excellent well we're just going to stop here at the little stretch point I would make a little quick little drink and we're gonna have a slow and lazy draft back to camp no this is as wild as Africa Gates there's there's no other way to to put it if you want to see Africa come to Botswana come to civility we got a pleasant surprise as two black back jackals left their burrow not too far from our rest stop just proving even at a rest stop you never know what's hiding in the bushes nearby but now it's time to go and braai [Music] [Music] I'm gonna make some hummus some hummus yeah some hummus that sounds like you need a bit of power for that I do it's time to use up that 200 amp hours of lithium a bit ruffy's hummus in the bush experiment was turning out really well and we are definitely ending off our trip in savooty with style [Music] so we're all packed up and ready to go we are leaving cebuti today it's been uh pretty nice day in terms of the animal sightings and all of that stuff you know it was brilliant we didn't have as much activity in the campsite as we did at mojoto in Kauai but it was nice and peaceful and we didn't have to be looking over our shoulders all the time so there's definitely trades you know here and there for you know the different places but I must say it was it has been quite spectacular the game driving is what I think makes savuti so special that you can head out for game drives nice and early every morning and you know come back late every afternoon and you know just really maximize your time out driving around exploring and doing all that stuff it was awesome to go to Quarry Hill go check out the baobabs go you know we really tried to explore as much as we could in the time that we had here and I think we did pretty well and we saw enough that we know that you know if we ever come back here we know exactly how we'd like to do it again but for now we're going to move on to our next adventure so we're gonna start making our way through to muchenji now um and then we're going to be heading to senati in kasane and then we're going to be making our way back home to Pretoria and Johannesburg so we've got our last little tail end of the trip to do and I hope you will join us on that on the next episode anyways thank you so much for tuning in and we'll catch you on the next one cheers thank you so much to the awesome sponsors for making these trips happen and providing us with equipment designed to conquer the toughest over Landing conditions and I want to let our patreon members know how much I appreciate their continued support month after month keeping Rome alive one video at a time thank you so much for watching and I will catch you on the next adventure when we head to Kauai cheers [Music]

Channel: Roam Overlanding

Views: 81,130

Keywords: 4wd, 4x4, offroad, travel, overlanding, toyota, hilux, adventure, camping, Adrian Abrahams, Roam Overlanding, ROAM, toyota hilux, Rooftop Tent Living, Garmin SA, 4x4 adventure, 4x4 overland south africa, Overlanding Southern Africa, Expedition Overland, Overlanding AFrica, Overlanding Travel, Overlanding Destinations, offroad adventure, self drive, okavango delta, Lions, african safari, botswana, Chobe national Park, Elephant Encounter, Baobab Gallery, baobab, beatyesterday, Wild dogs

Id: JMMh33DiOTs

Length: 48min 52sec (2932 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 22 2023