Chiefs Camp Okavango Delta

Chiefs Island in the Okavango Delta is home to one of the most stunning safari lodges you will probably ever lay your eyes on, its not just that “old world safari luxury” that is so common among African safari lodges these days, not that there is anything wrong with that “old world luxury safari”, one has only to watch Taylor Swifts Wildest Dreams music video to see the appeal of that! Yet Chiefs Camp is more, way more, think air-conditioned beds think white Egyptian linen if that's even a thing, think starchy bathrobes and private pools! Are we on the same page now?

When an adventure starts like this!!

However no matter how coddled in luxury one may feel, Chiefs Camp still keeps the very essence of Safari, the sense of adventure! It would be hard to loose that primitive safari feeling when one flies over one of the wildest and untouched areas in Africa, landing on a dusty airstrip in the middle of nowhere, picked up by an open sided four by four and whisked along down dusty tracks back to the lodge, with every corner holding a promise, maybe an elephant…..or a herd of Buffalo grazing across the plains.

Safari

There is a smell associated with a lodge like Chiefs Camp its hard to describe, a blend of leather and tea tree, fresh linen mingled in with hints of wild Sage and Acacia blown in from the Savannah.

Tempting as it is to spend the next five hundred plus words talking about the general pampering and spoiling that goes on at Chiefs Camp, I fear I will have to give it a miss, for words I do not have that would do it justice. Lets just say it does not disappoint!

Pamper salts and things...

A bath with a view

The wildlife does not disappoint either, for within two days we had seen all of the big five and so much more, when I say: “so much more”, I talk about the cutest interaction between a mother warthog and her three piglets and a tortoise,….all right here it goes: we driving along it must have been about ten in the morning because we had just re embarked upon our explorations after a brief Coffee stop next to an ancient Acacia tree, we moved on only stopping to examine the tracks of various animals along the way. As we came out of a little wooded area we found a small pan that still contained a little water, it was next to this little body of water that we found mother warthog and her three piglets, her little ones where amusing themselves with an upturned tortoise it seemed they where trying to eat it, however the tortoise was quite safe in its shell and even the roughest treatment from the little hogs did it no harm, however as our guide didn’t fail to point out the tortoise was sure to die because it was upturned with no one to turn it over back on its feet, it was at this point that the little hogs bored of the unresponsive tortoise ran off to amuse themselves with pulling out tuffs of grass. This left mother warthog standing alone besides the upturned tortoise and that's when she did the cutest thing ever. She took a quick look at the tortoise, lowered her snout and flipped it over back on its feet an impatiently ran off after her little ones, leaving the tortoise to amble off into the long grass. While I hate to ascribe human feelings to animals it was still a very touching moment, regardless of what motivated her to do what she did. And to me its moments like this that make a safari a real “safari”

The Hogs and there upturned Tortoise

The Tortoise makes its escape

Some time back some one asked me what I meant by ‘Romantic” while roses and candles are no doubt romantic, for me its more, its little kids walking down dusty roads carrying there school shoes its a land rover with a tin bath on its roof under an African sky, its the smell of the rain or a stormy sunset,

So Chiefs Camp…… well Chiefs Camp is romantic!!!     

Because I am nice person here a link too the Chiefs Camp website  

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Thanks for visiting

Garreth Brown