September 6
We were up at 6:30 for breakfast and today they had the French toast with berry sauce which was excellent as was the omelet yesterday. The food and service at Ngoma lodge were above and beyond. (one more night here would have been great) Everything was great here, the power did go out a few times, but the generator backup kicked in quickly.
We left for Kesane Airport at 7:30 and a large sable antelope running at break-neck speed crossed the road in front of us. Kesane international airport is the size of a small-town airport. When we were here with MJ (waiting to be picked up to go to Lebala) he asked how large our airports were in the States. I said it depends on the size of the town or city. Some are even smaller than this and many are many times larger than this.
It was two scenic short flights to Lebala Camp. The first flight was only 15 minutes, and we then changed to a smaller plane for the last 40 minutes to Lebala
Camp in the Kwando Concession. Ruby was our pilot on the 11-seater plane that
had 9 on board. We saw a couple of elephants and an Eagle flew under the plane.
Lebala Camp sits on a forested island in the
432,000-acre Kwando Private Concession, sharing a 19-mile water boundary with
Moremi Game Reserve. The camp
We were all hungry and were anticipating a nice lunch (as we had in the last camp) but we learned that here they serve “brunch” which essentially is a second breakfast with maybe one choice for “lunch”. The food here was basic and more like their “home-cooking”. So, there was not a lot of variety, though we of course found plenty of food to eat once we got used to their schedule. There weren't snacks available at all times like at our last camp.
We were shown to our tents that overlook the Linyanti Wetlands. (mostly dry this time of year) I chose this and the next camp for the abundance of big cats in this predator-rich region. The area is also known to have African Wild Dogs aka Painted Dogs, which I was keen to see. Unlike the National Parks where they must stay on the road, in concessions they can go off road and get up close to the wildlife. They also have a tracker that works with the guide to get out of the vehicle and examine the tracks to determine which direction wildlife is going. Some camps have only a driver/guide and some have a guide and a spotter. In National Parks there is more traffic with safari vehicles since they are open to the public and many different lodges use it as well as people who want to self-drive their own vehicles. (if there is a wildlife spotting there can be a "traffic jam" at animal sightings compared to concessions that only allows the vehicles of the lodges that own it and they generally limit the number of jeeps at a sighting)
During the afternoon drive we came across a Leopard that had a Red
Lechwe kill that he had stolen from two Cheetah brothers. We spent a lot of
time watching him gorge as much of it as possible before something came to take
it away from him. (and not knowing when his next meal would be) He was
constantly looking around to see if there was any threat coming. We were so
close you could hear the crunching bones and sinew being pulled. (check out the
videos on my Google Photos Album) If you are sensitive, skip past the way too many photos we took at this sighting.
We saw quite a few birds and an Impala male was chased away
by some other males from his harem. We also saw a huge Hamerkop nest in a tree.
We finished our day following a pack of Spotted Hyenas in hopes they would lead
us to a kill. There wasn’t a kill, so we stopped for our sundowner. They put
out snacks and anything you wanted to drink was available. They quickly learned
what we liked and made sure they were always on board.
Dinner at this camp was “family style” meaning we all sit
together with other guests. People at these camps come and go on different
schedules depending on their safari schedule. We learned that we only had one
night with a foursome, but we would run into them for one night at our next
camp. The staff here were very accommodating, and we really liked our guide and
tracker.
