You can never have too many bee-eaters…!

Little bee-eaters, Portakabins, elephants, boat rides, more little bee-eaters, an FA Cup final, lovely people, a lunar eclipse, more elephants and a beef Wellington. That just about sums up my trip to Muchenje Safari Lodge in Botswana!

Getting There

If you’re trying to get to Muchenje, I wouldn’t start from anywhere in Kenya!

Here was my itinerary:

• Take a four-hour taxi from Ol Jogi to Nairobi

• Wait eight hours at the airport

• Take a two-hour flight to Addis Ababa

• Wait another hour-and-a-half at the airport

• Take a four-hour flight to Victoria Falls

• Queue for half an hour at immigration

• Take a van to the Zimbabwe border

• Get a health check in a Portakabin

• Go through Zimbabwe immigration in another Portakabin

• Go through Botswana immigration in yet another Portakabin

• Take another van to Kasane Airport

• Take a car to Muchenje

The whole trip took 22 hours door-to-door, and it would’ve been even longer if I’d taken the plane from Nanyuki to Nairobi. Fortunately, Ol Jogi managed to book me a car at 1600, and I was there by 2000 - even though it was supposed to be a six-hour drive!

Daily Life

Muchenje is a safari lodge in the Chobe region of Botswana, and I spent three weeks there taking pictures of the local wildlife plus the rooms, the guests and the local staff.

It was quite busy most of the time, so I was given the ‘overspill’ accommodation, but that was no hardship as it was the owner’s house!

I’d met Shaun and his wife, Bea, in Cobham before my trip, and House B was named after her. It was a very comfortable, open-plan thatched bungalow with a small kitchen, a lounge area, a bathroom and a bed with a mosquito net around it. There was also a deck outside with a great view down to the Chobe River.

It was a bit of a walk to the main area, so I didn’t actually spend much time in the house. Instead, I’d pack my cameras and laptop in my camera bag and take them to the lodge. My usual routine was to get up early, edit my pictures on my laptop and then wait for a security guard to take me to join the rest of the guests for an early morning game drive at 0600.

There was tea and coffee available at the bar, but I’m a coffee snob, so I didn’t partake! Instead, I’d download the day’s editions of The Daily Telegraph and The Times on my iPhone and perhaps do a bit more work on my photos.

I was running out of space on my hard drive, so I spent most of my spare time rating my shots so that I could delete the rest and free up some more room. The managers, Toff and Kiddy, were kind enough to buy me a couple of spare external hard drives just in case, but I didn’t need them in the end.

The morning game drive along the riverfront in Chobe National Park was usually pretty short, ending around 0800 in time for breakfast back at the lodge.

All the meals were served buffet-style, and there were plenty of options for breakfast, including muffins, pancakes, fresh fruit, granola and yoghurt as well as sausages, bacon and eggs from the grill. I limited myself to a bowl of fruit yoghurt and fruit pieces (usually papaya, watermelon and pineapple) plus another bowl of muesli, natural yoghurt and honey.

There were no fresh fruit juices, so I had to make do with cranberry or pineapple juice out of a carton.

It was up to the guests to decide what they wanted to do each day, and the trips were usually arranged by the guides over dinner the night before.

Sometimes, it was possible to go on a boat ride and then follow that up with an afternoon game drive straight afterwards. That meant leaving at 1000, driving around 45 minutes to Kasane, the nearest town and then spending around four-and-a-half hours going up and down the Chobe river on a canopied boat with movable canvas seats. We’d have lunch on the boat and then transfer to a couple of jeeps to go on the game drive.

On other days, there would be a nature walk from the lodge down to the river and then back up the ridge again. I went on one of them with one of the guides called KB, but we didn’t see much wildlife, so I generally tried to go on as many game drives and boat rides as I could.

There were only a couple of occasions when there weren’t enough vehicles available for me to go on a game drive and only one day when I couldn’t go on the boat. Unfortunately, that just happened to be the day that everyone who went on the boat saw two leopards on the game drive afterwards! Too bad…

Lunch at the lodge was usually at around 1300, and someone would beat a drum to signal that it was ready. There was usually one hot dish plus various salads, dessert and cheese and biscuits. We could have any drinks we wanted from the bar, including wine and spirits, but I usually stuck to Coke. It’s the one little luxury I afford myself whenever I’m in Africa!

The afternoon game drive usually lasted from around 1500 until 1900. The park closed at 1830, so it was often a bit of a rush to get back in time. On one occasion, we were too late, and our guide had to promise the guard a can of Coke in exchange for letting us through!

When we got back, there would always be a cheery welcome from Toff and Kiddy, plus a few little snacks at the bar. Some of these, such as the mini pizzas and meatballs were so delicious that I had to limit myself to one of each, or I’d have piled on the pounds. Normally, my rule is ‘no snacks, no seconds’, but, like Oscar Wilde, I can resist anything except temptation…!

After that, I’d usually order a gin and tonic from Tshepo, the barman, and immediately set up my laptop on the desk nearby to work on my pictures.

That became my ‘office’, and I was usually hard at work there whenever I had a spare moment. If you add on all the boat rides and game drives, I was working 16 or 17 hours a day! Some of my friends think these trips are just a chance for me to go on ‘holiday’. If only…!

The other activity I went on was a ‘mokoro’ ride. The mokoro is a canoe or dugout that used to be made out of a hollowed-out tree. The one at Muchenje was made out of fibreglass, but at least they’d painted it brown to make it look like wood!

I went with another guest, and it was alarmingly unstable at first as we both stepped into the mokoro! However, we soon got used to it, and it was a very peaceful way to spend 90 minutes or so watching the sun set on the river. We didn’t see many birds or other wildlife, but that wasn’t the point. It was just so nice to be

The dinner drum was normally heard around 1930. There were two tables - a large and a small one - and the seating plan was ‘managed’ so that the guests belonging to a big group could sit together. There were also places reserved for the guides and one of the managers as Toff and Kiddy took it in turns to ‘host’ the guests in the evenings.

The menu was always announced by one of the chefs beforehand, and sometimes it was written up on a blackboard. We had bread rolls and a starter served at the table, which was usually soup. We then queued up for our main course at the buffet, which was often fillet or rump steak or something else from the grill.

It was almost always ‘Ladies first’, and there was only one night when the gentlemen were given the honour - and that was just because Kiddy wasn’t there!

Dessert was also served at the tables, and it was often something involving chocolate or ice cream.

Overall, the food was pretty good. The soups and the fillet steak were delicious, and the beef Wellington was a very nice surprise. One lady complained about her rump steak, and I have to admit I did have diarrhoea for a whole week, but what do you expect when you go to Africa…?!

Dinner was usually over by around 2100, and that’s when I grabbed my camera bag and walked back to my room with one of the security guards. After getting ready for bed, I’d work on my pictures until I was tired enough to go to sleep.

Sometimes, there was a game drive after dinner, and I did go on one myself, but I didn’t get any decent shots, and it was chiefly memorable for the fact that my camera bag fell off the shelf when we went down a very steep hill, and all my equipment fell out!

Fortunately, nothing was damaged, and I was lucky enough to see an African scops owl when I walked back to my room. The security guard lit it up with his torch, and I managed to rest my long lens on his shoulder so that I could take a few pictures.

Wildlife

I took pictures of the lodge, the food, the guests, the vehicles and the spectacular sunsets, but the main reason I was in Botswana was to photograph the wildlife with my pair of Sony a1 mirrorless cameras.

If you’ve ever been on safari, you’ll know that you see almost all the species you’re going to see on the very first day, and then you get diminishing returns over the course of the rest of your trip. That was true in Muchenje, and I swiftly got a feel for what was ‘normal’ and what was not. Elephants and impala were normal; leopards and wild dogs were not!

I just missed having a leopard sighting, and I didn’t see any wild dogs, but I’ll be back again in October for another three-week stay, so I hope to tick those two off then!

Elephants were a different story. Chobe National Park has 70,000 elephants in an area of 11,000km², which is the highest concentration in the world. That makes it a great place to see elephants, obviously, and I certainly saw my fair share - both on game drives and also on boat rides, where we often saw them giving themselves dust baths on the beach.

You can also see most of the usual safari animals there, including lions, Cape buffaloes, common impala, common warthogs, chacma baboons, greater kudus, Nile crocodiles, red lechwe, sable antelope, southern giraffes and vervet monkeys. Leopards and wild dogs are occasional visitors (although I didn’t see any), but there are no rhinos or cheetahs.

I always keep a list of the different species that I see, and I counted 25 mammals and reptiles in total (see list below). It’s also a great place to see birds, and I saw 104 different kinds in just three weeks! My favourite African birds are the African fish eagle, the lilac-breasted roller and the little bee-eater, and I saw plenty of those three.

I also came across a few other birds of prey, including a bateleur, a brown snake-eagle, a few tawny eagles, a dark chanting-goshawk, a grey kestrel, a little sparrowhawk, a couple of martial eagles and a red-necked falcon.

As all our game drives were on the riverfront, we also saw a lot of waterbirds and waders, including the grey heron, Egyptian goose, African darter, reed cormorant, pied kingfisher, African jacana, blacksmith lapwing (or plover) and wire-tailed swallow.

Finally, it’s hard to go anywhere in southern Africa without seeing helmeted guineafowl, hornbills and ring-necked doves (or Cape turtle doves), and we saw plenty of those.

Photography

Having discussed the wildlife, I feel obliged to talk a little bit about my photography.

I took my two Sony Alpha 1 cameras with me and all my lenses apart from the bulky 400mm f/2.8:

• 12-24mm

• 24-70mm

• 70-200mm

• 600mm

• 1.4x teleconverter

• 2x teleconverter

I experimented with different lens combinations as I wanted the chance to take some wide-angle shots of the elephants, but I wasn’t very often in a position to do that, so I finally settled on the 600mm with the 1.4x teleconverter (the equivalent of 840mm) and the 70-200mm with the 2x teleconverter (or 140-400mm).

I did take my camera bag with all my other lenses in it whenever I went on a game drive or boat ride, but I rarely changed horses midstream, so to speak.

I ended up with a few decent shots (see above), but I only gave five stars to six of them, which was fewer than the seven I took at Ol Jogi - and I was only there for a third of the time!

I guess elephants and birds don’t quite inspire me as much as leopards and rhinos…

At both places, though, there was a distinct lack of action, which meant that I was mostly limited to taking portraits. That’s not necessarily a disaster, but it does mean that there’s less chance for something really dramatic and eye-catching.

It didn’t help that I had a few problems with my cameras. The toggle switch on the exposure compensation dial of one of the cameras started to stick, and, on one occasion, I forgot to turn my camera off before changing the lens. It stopped working completely, and I had to take the battery out for a whole minute before it went back to normal…

Another time, I was trying to take a picture of a chameleon that had dropped on to Kiddy’s head, but it just wouldn’t work. It was incredibly frustrating, and I eventually had to use my iPhone. When I checked it later, it turned out that I’d slightly knocked the lock switch on the battery grip.

That’s the thing about modern cameras: there are so many switches and buttons that it’s easy to end up with the wrong settings by accident.

One of the things I love about the Sony Alpha 1 is the ability to customise the settings. I set up my three custom modes on the main dial for my three favourite types of shot:

• Animal portraits: manual, aperture wide open, shutter speed 1/1000 of a second and Auto ISO

• Birds in flight: manual, aperture wide open, shutter speed 1/3200 of a second and Auto ISO

• Slow pan: shutter priority, shutter speed 1/30 of a second and 50 ISO

However, it’s very easy to forget which mode you’re in, and I remember screwing up one sighting of a baby elephant completely when I shot everything at 1/30 of a second!

One of the other problems was the autofocus. It was one of the main reasons I switched to mirrorless in the first place, but I’m starting to realise that it’s not quite as reliable as I thought.

There were quite a few occasions when eye detection didn’t work (or I was accidentally on bird rather than animal or vice versa), and that meant I had a few nasty surprises when I ended up going through my images.

On one occasion, I remember trying to shoot an African fish eagle in a tree. I was in ‘zone’ focus mode, but the focus box ended up on the wing rather than the eye. I knew it was a risk, but I didn’t dare switch to ‘spot’ in case I missed it taking off. When it did, it flew straight towards me in the boat, and I thought I’d got a great sequence. Unfortunately, the autofocus hadn’t worked, and none of the images was sharp…

My biggest disappointment, though, was the lack of slow pans. I thought I’d have a lot of good chances to take slow pan shots of the waterfowl down by the river, but they were often too far away, and when I did take a sequence, it was usually out of focus.

I had my gimbal tripod head with me, but I hadn’t brought my tripod, and there was nowhere to attach my clamp to the vehicle. That meant I had to do everything handheld, and it’s just a lot more difficult with slow pans.

The camera didn’t help, either. I remember taking one slow pan sequence at a very slow shutter speed, and the viewfinder appeared to ‘freeze’ as I tracked the animal. That was very disconcerting. Again, the main point of getting my new cameras was that they’d make it easier for these exact shots, but apparently not…

Another issue might have been my fault. After every game drive, I’d copy all my shots to my laptop from all four of my memory cards and my iPhone, but the bar could be a pretty distracting environment, and it was sometimes hard to remember where I’d got to after someone stopped to talk to me.

On one occasion, I was looking forward to seeing a couple of slow pans of an African jacana and an African darter that I’d taken on a boat ride. However, when I went through all my pictures from that day, I couldn’t see either shot.

Now, I don’t know whether I accidentally forgot to copy the photos from one of my memory cards or whether what I’d thought was a great shot on the back of my camera wasn’t as good on my computer screen, but I was pretty upset. It’s hard enough taking great wildlife shots without losing them afterwards!

I decided to make a note in future of the file number of anything I thought might be a five-star shot, but the numbering system on the camera was different from the one on the imported files, so that was too confusing to do.

All in all, my camera never exactly broke down, but it certainly didn’t make my life easy sometimes…!

The final factor that didn’t work in my favour was the weather. It started off reasonably warm and sunny, but it got a lot colder after the first week, and that meant the animals and birds didn’t come out to play as much. Fingers crossed I get a few quality sightings of leopards and wild dogs in October…

People

If you can get past the amusing nicknames of a lot of the staff at African safari lodges, then they’re lovely people. Lips, KB and Rambo were incredibly knowledgeable guides, but they were also unfailingly friendly and helpful.

The same goes for Tshepo, the barman, and all the kitchen and wait staff. I don’t think I ever even heard the word “No”…!

I also got on very well with Toff and Kiddy, the couple who ran the lodge. They set the tone for the whole place, and it was a common occurrence for Kiddy to get a hug from departing guests. Heck, even I got a hug once…!

The guests were also a pleasure to talk to. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s something about the people you meet on safari that makes them very good company. The only disappointment was that they usually only stayed two or three nights, so I was constantly having to say goodbye.

Verdict

Going on safari for me is just one long series of game drives, boat rides and hours and hours spent hunched over my laptop editing my photographs, but here’s a quick recap of my highs and lows:

• Highs

  • Spending two hours and exhausting all my memory cards taking pictures of bee-eaters on a couple of branches down by the river.

  • Watching a lioness walk straight towards me on a dirt track just after sunset.

  • Every time I had a great snack or a great bowl of soup or some of that delicious fillet steak!

  • Sharing jokes with the other guests, either in the bush or back at the lodge.

  • Hearing that Liverpool had won the FA Cup!

• Lows

  • Getting pins and needles in my hand taking pictures of the little bee-eaters - and they still haven’t gone away after a whole month!

  • Having diarrhoea for a week.

  • Missing the two leopards when there wasn’t room on the boat ride.

  • Photographing the lunar eclipse, which was pretty dark and disappointing. It wasn’t as red as it was supposed to be in the early stages, and then it was too dark to get decent pictures.

  • Every single shot I missed.

  • Every single shot that wasn’t sharp enough.

  • Every time my camera stopped working.

All in all, I very much enjoyed my trip, and I took thousands of photos, but I was a little bit disappointed I didn’t end up with more five-star shots. Maybe I’m just a perfectionist, but I hope that’s a good thing, driving me on to take better and better pictures.

I guess we’ll see in October…!

Species List

Animals (25)

African bush elephant 

Banded mongoose 

Cape buffalo

Chacma baboon

Common hippopotamus 

Common impala

Common slender mongoose

Common warthog 

Common waterbuck

Greater kudu

Lion

Nile crocodile

Nile monitor

Plains zebra

Puku 

Red lechwe

Reticulated giraffe

Sable antelope 

Scrub hare

Serrated tortoise 

Southern giraffe

Spotted cobra 

Steenbok

Tree squirrel 

Vervet monkey

Birds (104)

African darter

African fish eagle

African grey hornbill

African harrier-hawk

African hawk-eagle

African jacana

African openbill 

African spoonbill 

African stonechat

African wattled plover/lapwing

Allen’s gallinule

Arrow-marked babbler

Bateleur

Black egret 

Black-backed cisticola

Black-winged stilt

Blacksmith plover/lapwing

Blue waxbill

Bradfield’s hornbill 

Brown snake-eagle 

Brown-hooded kingfisher 

Burchell’s starling 

Cape starling

Carmine bee-eater

Cattle egret

Coppery-tailed coucal

Crested francolin

Crowned lapwing/plover

Dark chanting-goshawk

Double-banded sandgrouse 

Dusky lark

Egyptian goose

Emerald-spotted wood dove

Fork-tailed drongo

Giant kingfisher 

Great egret 

Greater blue-eared starling

Green wood hoopoe

Green-backed heron

Grey go-away-bird

Grey heron

Grey kestrel

Hamerkop

Helmeted guineafowl 

Hooded vulture 

Intermediate egret

Knob-billed duck

Kori bustard

Lappet-faced vulture 

Lilac-breasted roller 

Little egret 

Little sparrowhawk 

Long-tailed paradise whydah 

Long-toed plover

Magpie shrike 

Martial eagle 

Meyer’s parrot

Namaqua dove

Nightjar

Open-billed stork

Pied kingfisher

Pied wagtail

Purple roller

Pygmy goose

Red quelea

Red-backed shrike

Red-billed buffalo weaver

Red-billed oxpecker

Red-billed spurfowl/francolin

Red-billed quelea 

Red-billed teal

Red-crested korhaan

Red-necked falcon

Reed cormorant 

Ring-necked dove/Cape turtle dove

Rocket-tailed roller

Rüppell’s long-tailed starling 

Sacred ibis

Saddle-billed stork

Secretary bird

Senegal coucal

Southern ground hornbill 

Southern red-billed hornbill 

Spotted flycatcher

Spur-winged goose

Squacco heron

Striped cuckoo

Swainson’s spurfowl/francolin

Swallow-tailed bee-eater

Swamp boubou

Tawny eagle 

Tropical bulbul

Water thick-knee

Whiskered tern

White-backed vulture 

White-breasted cormorant 

White-browed sparrow-weaver

White-crested helmetshrike

White-crowned lapwing/plover

White-faced whistling-duck

White-fronted bee-eater

Wire-tailed swallow

Wood dove

Yellow-bellied greenbul

Yellow-billed oxpecker

Yellow-billed stork

If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.

If you’d like to book a lesson or order an online photography course, please visit my Lessons and Courses pages.