MAY 21 to 24–LITTLE VUMBURA

Oh, NO, not again!! As we arrived at the air strip for our transfer to LV, who should appear but the old couple, AGAIN! Our plane was already there when we arrived in the jeep. Fortunately, this time the transfer went a whole lot more smoothly. First, the old lady did NOT throw up in the plane this time <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Sick.gif" alt="" /> and, much more important, and we had a direct 25 minute flight. We were the first stop on the plane, and we actually landed at the correct air strip for Little Vumbura! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Clapping.gif" alt="" /> The trip from the airstrip was about is 25 minutes in the jeep, and then about 3 minutes in a boat, as LV is always surrounded by water and you must always go the last bit of the way in a boat.
It just depends on how high the water is, as far as where you get on the boat. We were so happy, we actually arrived in time at LV so that we could actually unpack and take a shower before the afternoon game drive.


Little Vumbura is a 6 roomed camp in the Okavango Delta in a private reserve bordering on the Moremi Game Reserve.
For reasons which I’m sure made sense to them, they pronounced the name of the camp as if it were spelled “VUMBRA”, totally leaving out the second “u”. This truthfully made the name of the camp much easier to pronounce, but I seemed to always get it wrong anyway. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" /> LV offers both land and water activities, and mokoro rides, as well as evening sunset cruises, and day and night drives. Each tent has an indoor bathroom, and an additional outdoor shower.
Our outside shower at LV was actually quite lovely, and for our tent, was situated a little bit away from our tent, which was not a problem, it just seemed somewhat unusual.
There was a nice little table and chairs outside our tent, which often provided us a nice view of some red leche grazing in the area, and I did use it to sit at with a glass of wine and make some notes on the computer. At night, we often heard hippos very close to us and lions off in the distance. Unlike the other camps, LV was NOT built on raised platforms, which seemed much more comfortable, but I wondered about the presence of animals in camp, and how safe it was. Truthfully, though, the only animals that we actually SAW terribly close to LV were baboons and red leche. However, apparently they had had an elephant in the camp the day before we arrived.

The quality of the furniture and furnishings at LV is a step above Savuti.
There is a light in the bathroom which is actually bright enough to see something, there is a safe, a nice table and chairs outside. Like at Savuti, the water is solar heated, and the manager actually told us that you need to let the water run in the shower for 4 minutes before you get hot water, as it takes that long for the cool water to get out of the pipes. She also suggested that folks wait until around lunch time for their shower, as it might not be warm first thing in the morning, a suggestion that we already knew, but good advice for folks that were coming there as their first camp.

We were not impressed with the game drives overall at Little Vumbura, which I know was partially a function of the fact that we saw very few animals there, compared to Savuti and to Mombo, which of course is somewhat unfair to the guide. I don’t know if the level of game that we saw at LV was unusual for that area or not I guess we were spoiled by the amount of game we saw at Savuti. We did see a lion that had gotten into some type of an altercation with an unknown animal
and 4 lion cubs.
Ain’t it great to be a cat? <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" /> However, there were often periods of time for 10 minutes or so that we didn’t see ANY game, not impala, not warthog, not anything. We resolved at that point that, especially since we had literally RUN so hard at Savuti, and we expected to run just as hard at Mombo, that we would use Vumbura to rest and relax a bit before heading on to Mombo, and give ourselves a chance to slow down and enjoy the beauty of the water camp. We did enjoy the beauty and serenity of LV
and we changed our expectations of what we expected to see there, from that point on, and had a better time. We also resolved to do what we wanted to do, when we wanted to do it.

Our main guide there at LV was K (or Kay??). I suspect his name is actually a long African name which Americans can’t get a handle on, so they just call him K. He had been a guide for around 20 years, and he actually did seem fairly skilled at finding animals, compared to the other guides, but his accent was very thick, which made him difficult to understand. He also didn’t have the niceties down of making friends with the guests, and he seemed to ignore totally the niceties of taking pictures. It didn’t matter if it were morning or evening, he always seemed to drive straight into the sun, and he never seemed to get the concept that a picture aimed straight into the sun won’t cut it. I do feel bad that our evaluation that we did at LV was pretty unfavorable to K, but he does seem to be a person who time has passed by in terms of being a guide at Wilderness.

The first full day at LV, we decided to take the day off from game drives. We did the mokoro in the morning, took the afternoon off, and did the sunset cruise that evening. It was great, and we would do it the same way again!!

For those that don’t know, mokoros are little tiny boats, similar to canoes. These days I guess they are made out of fiberglass, but they previously had been made out of hollowed out trees. Initially, the folks at LV tried to talk us out of the mokoro that morning, and urged us to go on a game drive instead. That didn’t sit terribly well with me. I figured out afterward that the reason why they did that is that no one else wanted to do the mokoro that morning, and since they always have to have two mokoros go at a time, they had to put Eric and I in separate mokoros, when normally they put two people in one. Oh well.. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" /> I probably did myself a disservice and psyched myself out, as I read some of the reading material in the room, which states something to the effect that “Occasionally mokoros tip over and guests and/or their cameras get wet. Usually this is because a guest makes a sudden movement and causes the mokoro to tip over”. I had read some trip reports before I went, but they all just talked about the mokoro as “serene, etc”, nothing really about them tipping over. Reading that bit in the room made me somewhat psycho that my camera was going to get wet. At that point, I should have just taken the backup camera, but we took my Nikon anyway. Well, let me tell you, those mokoros are TIPPY!!!!! By the way, I’ve never been in a canoe in my life, that I remember, anyway. I was nervous as hell, once I got in that thing, and every time the boat shifted a little bit, I was nervous we were going to tip over. I ended up passing my camera to Eric, for him to hold instead of me. And, of course, the ONLY time that it happened to us when we didn’t have another battery along, the battery in the camera died after we had been in the boat about 10 minutes.
So I didn’t get hardly any pictures on the trip anyway!!! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Mad.gif" alt="" />

The mokoro does give you a whole different view of the delta and you can get much closer to some birds and to the lovely water lilies than you can otherwise, all in a really quiet setting, vs being in a motor boat.
But, as I said, if you don’t have exposure to being in a canoe, etc., it is pretty tippy and if you’re paranoid about your camera, as I am, you might want to take the back-up camera. By the end of the trip, I was feeling better about the trip, but still not terribly confident. They do take you to an island where you stop, and we did about an hour game walk, and have your morning tea or coffee and cookies. I really enjoyed that part of the trip! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" />

After the morning mokoro, we enjoyed a relaxing afternoon at the camp, including some drinks at the bar, as we downloaded pictures and made notes on the computer. LV was the only place where we had to actually use the public spaces to recharge our computer and camera batteries. They have a plug in the office and also at the bar. For recharging of batteries, be sure to take along a South African adapter if you can, as it helps to eliminate problems with recharging. We also took along a multi plug adapter since we had so many electronics to be recharged. We had extra rechargeable batteries for the cameras and video camera, plus the laptop battery and the FlashTrax battery, which lasted about 3 hours each, depending on what you did. We had a multi usb card reader for the laptop, so that used more of the battery power when it was not plugged in.

Since we have been known to frequent a bar or two in our time, we decided to just hang out around the bar and do our thing. The staff were very interested in my laptop and Eric’s Flashtrax gizmo and several of them stood around watching as we did a slide show on the computer and on the Flashtrax of the pictures we had taken there at LV. [img]http://www.info-res.com/ehill/pixs/africa/lv11-a.jpg[/img]
We found out later that the folks there at LV called Eric “the computer guy”.. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" /> I wondered at the time, due to the level of their interest in our pictures, how often the staff (bartenders, etc) actually get to go on game drives, if ever. I asked one of the staff ladies somewhere–I THINK it was at Mombo–how often they get to go on game drives. She told us once a week. I have no idea whether that is standard policy across Wilderness Camps or not, but I would hope so, as it seems a shame if they live that close to these wonderful animals all the time and are not able to see them.

Afternoon ‘tea’ at LV was nicer than at Savuti, as that afternoon we had tacos, and another afternoon, we had pizza, vs. just cookies, etc., at Savuti.

That evening we enjoyed a lovely sunset cruise. [img]http://www.info-res.com/ehill/pixs/africa/lv12-a.jpg[/img]
The sunset cruise was directed by Lehti, one of the regular guides at LV, and Wilson, who apparently is an employee of Wilderness, kind of on temporary loan to LV at the time we were there. We really enjoyed the sunset cruise, for the great picture opportunities and for the good time we had!! We enjoyed our time, and laughed a lot, enjoying the company of Lehti and Wilson and the two other couples in our boat. One of the couples in the boat had run totally out of video tapes for their camera, and they had two more camps to go! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Shocked.gif" alt="" /> It turned out that our video camera took exactly the same tapes as theirs, so we gave them a couple of our extra tapes, since we knew that we had many more tapes than we would actually use. We told them that the ‘price’ would be that they had to post a trip report on Traveltalkonline. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" /> However, so far, the pikers haven’t shown up with that trip report! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Mad.gif" alt="" /> We were impressed that for sundowners at LV, they actually used real glasses vs. the metal cups or glasses they used at Savuti, but the snacks for sundowners at LV were not nearly as good as at Savuti. We got what I thought were some really great sunset pics. [img]http://www.info-res.com/ehill/pixs/africa/lv13-a.jpg[/img]



General note regarding laundry–As has been stated previously, the Wilderness camps in Botswana provide free laundry service, although most do NOT do underwear, and LV did not. They did provide laundry detergent so that one could do their own underwear without any problem. A word of warning though–you should pay attention as far as the specific items that you give to them to do, as we had a screw up on laundry at Savuti, and got some of laundry mixed up with other couple and at LV, they didn’t bring back half of our stuff. Part of the reason why they might not bring back all your stuff is that they don’t have any dryers and the stuff may not be all dry. Regardless, keep track of what you give them, in case all of it does not come back.

For the next morning game drive we didn’t expect a lot and we didn’t see much to begin with, but the morning definitely picked up!!! We had a private game drive because the other couples were on a mokoro trip. Ultimately, we saw a baby giraffe, along with about 5 other giraffe, and 2 baby baboons with their parent. [img]http://www.info-res.com/ehill/pixs/africa/lv14-a.jpg[/img]
We also saw the unusual and endangered sable antelope (VERY beautiful, by the way), [img]http://www.info-res.com/ehill/pixs/africa/lv15-a.jpg[/img]
tessebe antelope, zebra, impala, kudo, and wildebeest. We had not yet seen either leopard or buffalo and we did want to see both of those, definitely. K thought that we might well be able to find buffalo, so we went off in search of buffalo. This was where 20 years of experience paid off with K, and we found out later that we had driven approximately 15 kilometers off the road to find the buffalo. We located a HUGE herd of buffalo, maybe 1,000 strong, which was really nice, especially since these were the first buffalo we had seen, as we hadn’t seen any at Savuti at all. [img]http://www.info-res.com/ehill/pixs/africa/lv16-a.jpg[/img]
K was able to track them because he saw a HUGE cloud of dust way off in the distance and knew from experience that it was probably a huge herd of buffalo. [img]http://www.info-res.com/ehill/pixs/africa/lv17-a.jpg[/img]
As opposed to our first game drive, K finally got off the road. We loved seeing the huge herd and we were able to take several pictures that showed the dust, but again were kind of flummoxed as to how one takes a picture of 1,000 animals except from a helicopter. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" />

After the morning game drive, since we had seen the buffalo, we decided we would take the rest of the day off, knowing that we would be running wild at Mombo. Thuto at Savuti AND the people at LV had all told us specifically do NOT miss a single game drive at Mombo, and we took that advice to heart. Taking the rest of the day off at LVt gave us the chance to relax, to get all of the memory cards downloaded, and do some packing, etc. before the end of the day. When we left Savuti, we hadn’t packed at all until the day we were leaving, and so we rushed around like mad that last morning to get our stuff packed to leave, and we didn’t want a repeat of that experience. We were effectively the only people around camp that afternoon except for the staff. It was very quiet around the camp when everybody was out on the game drives, but also very nice and relaxing. LV is a very pretty camp and we felt that afternoon gave us a chance to actually enjoy the camp, which you really don’t get the chance to do, for the most part.

Mostly that afternoon, we again hung around the bar and the main lounge area, working on the computer and helping ourselves to the contents of the bar! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" /> Both at Savuti and LV, they told us if there didn’t happen to be a bartender around, just help yourselves to the contents of the bar. At Mombo, that didn’t seem to be an issue, as there always seemed to be someone around to take care of your drinking needs–as well as anything else you needed! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" />

The game drives are so intense that the notes and working on them is really difficult while you are there. However, if you don’t make notes at the time, everything just runs together and you have NO idea what you saw when. You lose complete track of days, in that after a couple of days you have no idea what day of the week it is and are only concerned about when the next game drive is, etc.

On our last morning at LV, I asked NOT to not have K as a guide. Eric was mad at me for embarrassing K, but I didn’t particularly care, as I didn’t enjoy my time with K. That morning we got Lehti and Wilson as our guides and we had a lot better time. K frankly seemed kind of relieved to not have to deal with us. That morning we had a lot better time in the jeep, and we saw our first leopard of the trip, which was found by K, by the way. I didn’t get a particularly great picture of the leopard, as she was in the shade, but it was our first leopard! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Clapping.gif" alt="" /> [img]http://www.info-res.com/ehill/pixs/africa/lv18-a.jpg[/img]
We also saw lots of zebras, wildebeast, and warthogs. We noted that Wilson often was giving Lehti directions about which way to go, so we suspected that Lehti is a new guide in training. We still tipped K the recommended amount for the whole time we were there and gave Lehti a tip also..

After our morning game drive, we were able to enjoy a leisurely lunch, since we were already basically packed from the day before. Fifteen minutes before we were due to leave LV we found out that we were going to be enjoying a helicopter flight to Mombo!!! How cool!!!!!! [img]http://www.info-res.com/ehill/pixs/africa/lv19-a.jpg[/img]

Overall, I would say that we enjoyed our time at LV and we relaxed there much more than at the other camps, but we would not necessarily be in a big hurry to go back to a water camp in the future. [img]http://www.info-res.com/ehill/pixs/africa/lv20-a.jpg[/img]
We came to Africa to see ANIMALS and we felt like we didn’t see the amount of animals at LV that we did at the other two camps. We did very much enjoy doing the mokoro and the sunset cruise and seeing all the waterlilies, but in the event that we do end up going back to Africa some day, we will probably not
do a water camp next time.

Link to next section of trip report

Carol I guess from your standpoint you and Eric could have been disappointed, but from my perspective as a reader, you are doing a fabulous job of relating your experiences. You keep me entertained and informed <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/thanks.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Clapping.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Joy.gif" alt="" />

Can't wait for the next chapter! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Thumbsup.gif" alt="" />

It's hard to say we were disappointed in LV, but we were somewhat disappointed yes, because we were so spoiled from our wildlife experience at Savuti. If LV had been our first camp, I'm sure we would have thought it was great! So, I guess it's all a matter of perspective! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" /> Mombo is next, and it certainly did not disappoint, I guarantee!!!!!! (Hey, I think we should have a LION emoticon! How bout it, computer guys?????????) <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />

Thanks again for a great report! We'll be waiting for the next chapter!! Thanks so much for all the hard work on your African adventure!!
Sugarae

Next section is on Mombo, which is going to be one of the hardest and the most pictures. Was hoping maybe to have it posted tonight, but don't hold your breath! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" /> Hopefully should be posted this week, though..

Carol: Being one of the persons who will probably never get to Africa; thanks so much for "taking us with you". I'm sure that most of us don't want the story to end. Thanks, Laura

Laura--I, on the other hand, am going to be kinda happy to get it finished! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />

I don't want it to end neither. This is a great trip report. The best one yet.
Carol you should think of writing a book on your stay there. Like I said before reading your report is like reading a great book you can't put down. I am going to be sad when it's over.

Ah, thanks for the kind words. I've never written a book, or anything else that's been published, so doubt that is in the works, although I wouldn't mind to take another trip to Africa and write it off as research.. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" />