Tour contin- Days 8-12 (safari time!)

We were up bright and early and headed back into Maun to pick up supplies for the next 5 days. This was the safari/game viewing part of the tour. We were situated in Savuti on days 8-10 and then we moved to Chobe, a different park, for days 10-12. This was full on wild camping (even more so than the Delta) so we had to burn our toliet paper after we used it and keep all food and snacks in the trailer at night. We would also hear a lot of animal sounds in the evenings including hippos (again), lions and one evening we heard a buffalo fight! In both Savuti and Chobe we got up at 5 and headed out on a morning game drive. Then we would come back and make brunch then relax until the midday heat passed until about 3. Then we would head out for another game drive returning to camp just after the sun had set.  We saw A LOT of animals and I have been extremely lucky to have come away from my first time in Africa having seen the 'Big 5': lion (Savuti and Chobe), buffalo (Chobe), rhino (Botsalano game reserve), leopard (Savuti) and elephant (everywhere!) .

Savuti:
 One of the highlights includes seeing a leopard! Our guide spotted it from about 30 meters away. It was hiding on  top of a termite mound by a tree and it took a while, and a lot of explaining, before us tourists could see it! He then said "no sudden movements" and drove off the track (you get fined if you got caught doing this) and got us about 5-10 meters away from the leopard-which was incredible!
We also saw a lioness attempt to hunt some wilderbeast but it was extremely obvious to the wilderbeast as there was no long grass for her to hide in!

Chobe:
There was an extraordinary number and different types of birds here! We saw a lot of elephants and about a herd of 300 buffalo which at one point you could see from our camp! One very strange thing that happened was on the evening game drive we were watching the buffalo drink at the rivers edge. Then our guide spotted a lioness hidden in a bush. He then realised a large buffalo had spotted the lion and this buffalo then ran at the lioness to chase her away!
Another funny thing that happened was one of the other people on the tour made the mistake of leaving her bananas in her tent one night. She woke up in the middle of the night to a honey badger having located and removed these bananas from her bag. It then backed out the tent once she sat up and in the morning there were simply the banana skins outside her tent! It was only then that our guide told us how violent these badgers can be. Their teeth and claws are sharp enough to rip 4x4 tyres and they also bite the testicles off buffalos (these buffalos then proceed to bleed to death!). It was  good job Malene did not know this before the badge entered her tent!