I usually try to inject some humour into these write-ups – well the ones that survive me accidentally deleting them – and the source for that is invariably when things go wrong. Unfortunately, barring some bad luck with the weather, this was one of the smoothest long-haul trips we’ve ever had.

Prep

We had been told by our travel company that we should take large denomination US dollar bills for Argentina. Before we left, some half hearted research turned up a YouTube video from a couple who ‘travel professionally’, talking in rather breathless terms about the disasters they’d had, trying in vain to use their bank cards and lurching from one retail crisis to another. Ugh… It’s really not that complicated. Yes, you will need to change some currency; of course, you will get hit with a fee if you use an ATM; no, you probably don’t want to shop for a new pair of Nikes: they will have to come a long way, and there is significant inflationary pressure on the economy. Cash transactions were actually a lot less hassle than other places we’ve been (yes, Vietnam, we’re looking at you), and we generally paid by card anyway.

Packing was tricky as we had to cater for a substantial temperature range: the coldest it got down to in Patagonia was about 3C in very strong winds, whereas it was 32C at the last estancia an hour south of Buenos Aires. We picked up an excess weight charge on the flight to Patagonia. For our cases, I hasten to add, although with the amount we ate on this holiday… The limit was 15kg (compared to 23kg for the flight from London). They will give you some latitude if you’re only a kilo or so over: we managed to balance out the content of our cases reasonably well for the flight back.

We were recommended to get yellow fever jabs for our short stay in Brazil – unnecessarily, according to our guide there. He also told us that our ‘jungle formula’ bug spray wouldn’t be any use. He was right: we got absolutely eaten alive.

Our research suggested that we would need US style plug converters for Brazil, and European for Argentina. The reality was that it was different type of wall socket in every hotel we stayed in, and in one place we were sharing the one accessible socket between us.

Camera wise, I took my now 12 year old Canon 5D MKII, a long lens (100-400mm) and the extender for what turned out to be a thoroughly condor free holiday. (I’m of an age where the word ‘condor’ doesn’t make me immediately think of the large vulture, but pipe tobacco.) My new Pixel 10 Pro got a good workout. The video I shot with it was a bit meh: I could have made a few adjustments (frame rate etc), but the file sizes were correspondingly increasing to a point where I actually thought I might run out of room on it. I was thoroughly impressed with the stills it took, particularly in low light. Any photos below are from my phone, unless I’ve included the exposure settings.

Iguazu Falls

When we landed in Sao Paolo, we had a 3 hour layover. Well, on paper: we were running late, and had to get / recheck our luggage. In a shocking turn of events, we had to do some actual running (luckily this was before we started bulk loading on empanadas), and then flew to Iguazu Falls airport. We had 2 nights in what was the swankiest accommodation of the trip, the Belmond hotel. It was rather nice – and rather expensive. A little bit stuffy for our taste, if I’m being honest, although that’s a reflection on us rather than the staff who were universally friendly. We like to be able to rock up to a hotel and not feel self-conscious when we have just unfurled ourselves from a cattle-class seat in questionable trousers.

Its location, inside the Iguazu national park is what it’s all about. There is a 2km walk that you pick up from right outside. The one path that was open (there was a pretty spectacular electrical storm on our first night, and a couple of sections were blocked with fallen branches) took us all the way out to a platform over the water. It’s quite overpowering on first encounter.

The hotel had a couple of nice touches, including free bike hire. The ‘what to do if you see a puma’ (we didn’t) signs on the pathway were a little disconcerting. One minor downside: we had an idle day at the pool, and the helicopters buzzing overhead going on sightseeing tours was pretty constant. Strictly filed under ‘first world problems’. It’s a lovely spot.

Our next stop proved to be a minor error in judgment. We had a drive to the Argentinian side of the falls. Our error was that after what was a pretty hot and sweaty hike – it was about 4km – we were going straight to the airport. We managed to straighten ourselves up a little before we left the park. Still, I’d like to apologise to the person who had to sit next to me on the plane (my wife).

But the views were absolutely stunning.

Buenos Aires

All of the internal flights were super-efficient. In both of the countries there was a similar ‘zonal’ boarding process, with the people at the back going first. The degree to which this was indicated (at least to non-native language speakers) at the gate varied wildly, as did the integrity of the respective queues. We invariably ended up boarding later than we were supposed to: it didn’t really matter as we weren’t in a Ryanair style foot race to try to get overhead storage.

The hotel we were staying – The Nuss in Palermo – was quite a change after the Belmond. The fittings in the room were a bit dated, and there was a severe lack of usable power outlets. But the bed was fabulously comfortable, and they’d upgraded us to a suite. It was in a really great location: Soho in Palermo.

We had a half day food tour with a guide, which was really good fun. I shudder to think how many empanadas I ate over the two weeks. The fugazza-style cheese and onion pizza: I’m glad I tried it (in a traditional eatery in la Boca) but it’s pretty full on. It’s more mozzarella than you should digest over the course of a year.

We really enjoyed ambling around Soho: lots of bars and restaurants. Buenos Aires is fantastic – like a European capital, only with better town planning. We had 3 nights there, but unfortunately our last day was cut short by the weather. It rained spectacularly. We did manage to squeeze in a trip to the Recolata graveyard.

Patagonia

Next up was a 3 hour flight to El Calafate. We were really struck by the change in terrain on the drive into town from the airport, passing through what our guide later described as steppe: borderline desert and very few trees, we both thought it bore a similarity to some of the terrain we covered in Iceland. Though to be fair we were shattered and it was quite late.

El Calafate has a slightly Wild West feel to it. It’s a perfectly pleasant town that has expanded exclusively to serve tourism: plenty of places to eat and drink, and not a lot else.

We stayed in a hotel called the Patagonian Queen: very friendly and top marks for having sensibly located and abundant power outlets (yes, this was a running theme). The manager put on quite the show making cocktails served on glacier ice.

We had a couple of tours, starting with a drive to see the Perito Moreno glacier. It’s absolutely stunning: a first for both of us to be as close to one (our only other experience being a vague white line on the horizon in Iceland). We didn’t have much luck with seeing any ice ‘calving’ – pretty much every time we turned our backs, something happened.

Our second tour was a drive of about an hour to a boat at Puerto Bandera. It was extremely windy, and there was quite a chop at the start of the trip. We went up the Upsala channel past some very impressive icebergs (a first), to a rather isolated ranch called Estancia Christina. We transferred to a small truck for a very bumpy 45 minute drive up to a viewing point. There was a group of serious hikers who did it on foot. It would have been pretty hard work: I think it was something like about 8km, and none of it easy. The viewpoint was absolutely spectacular.

While we were only walking around the viewpoint for about an hour, we needed our cold weather gear. It was windy rather than bitterly cold: so windy that it was pretty difficult to stand upright in parts.

It has to be said that the late lunch that was waiting for us at the Estancia was fantastic. The portions were absolutely enormous.

Estancia la Bandada

After 3 nights in Patagonia, we flew back to an airport south of Buenos Aires, and then had a one hour drive to our last stop, the Estancia Bandada. It was our favourite: our room was enormous, the food – and there was a lot of it – was fantastic, and the setting was out of this world.

One of our favourite parts of our time there were a couple of dogs who have the life of it on the ranch: moving from one group to the other and getting lavished with attention. This is how one of them looked after jumping into a pond and curtailing what may be my only ever encounter with capybara. He was quicker off the mark than I was so I didn’t manage to get it on camera.

There are plenty of activities: I had an early morning birding walk (see above); we also went horse-riding. I’d like to formally apologise to Larry, who was my mount for the afternoon. We had to be led like children and, even with that, I have to say that I took to it the same way I did to golf the first time I tried it. I am never going to be any good at it – ever – and while I enjoyed it, I’d quite happily never do it again.

The property is big enough that you can also just take yourself off for a walk. And I did ask: there are no dangerous animals of the zero-, four- or eight legged varieties.

I quite like the motion blur effect on the Pixel. Counter-intuitively, you keep the camera still:

I spent hours trying to get a decent shot of hummingbird. They are very tricky, as I discovered trying to do the same in Cuba. I think this species is related:

The focus isn’t great, but I ran out of time.

Final thoughts

So that was it: we had 3 nights at the estancia, then an hour to the airport, and a very long journey home. The flight included a ‘technical stop’ for an hour and a half in Rio. That meant 15 hours on the plane. Shattered doesn’t begin to cover it.

It was our first time in South America and we absolutely loved it. It was – well, via some rather arbitrary rules of our own devising – a lovely way of hitting the landmark of our 50th and 51st countries visited. We were gutted not to get the chance to see more of Buenos Aires. It is a fantastic city. I’m sure they are geared up for all sorts of dietary convictions, but it is a carnivore’s paradise. Would we go back again? In a heartbeat. We have also just scratched the surface with Brazil.

If you have landed here, it’s either because I’ve bored you rigid about photography and foisted the link on you directly, or you’ve googled something obscure like ‘Botswana and Tatooine’ and are wondering what goggles to pack for your own trip.

The TL;DR version: no matter how long you are staying, pack for about 3 days. Assuming you don’t fancy 40 degrees Celcius in the shade and are going in winter, take a wind-proof coat, a warm hat, and something to cover your nose and mouth. Maybe not goggles though: the lions will assume you’re an idiot and bite your head off.

Packing and Clothes

Packing for this trip turned out to be something of an art form. As most of the camps in the Okavango Delta are very remote you will likely need to travel by light aircraft, which imposes a 20kg total luggage limit; the bags also have to be soft, so no wheelie cases. If the planes are busy (ours weren’t), you can look forward to being weighed with your bags. I’m not entirely sure what happens if you exceed a limit on a busy flight. Maybe you have to travel on your own when you’re thinner.

My camera bag weighed 7kg, which left me with a bit of a struggle to pack everything else in.

I bought a 50 litre holdall which turned out to be a little small, coming in at 9kg fully packed, with enough spare capacity to buy a postcard or a nice sheet of A4. I really regretted not taking a GoreTex shell that I didn’t have room for. The temperature for the morning drives was around 10 degrees Celcius, which started to feel pretty bloody cold after half an hour: while my clothes were warm enough, they weren’t wind-proof. The jeeps at different camps were kitted out with a variety of blankets, fleecy ponchos (if you’ve gotten past the part where you might get weighed in front of the pilot and the other passengers, you can see that these trips don’t really cater for your vanity) and blankets. I took a peaked cap, but could have done with something warmer. I also missed the part where our travel agent recommended taking lip balm. I expect my lips will grow back at some point.

All of the camps we stayed at do laundry to accommodate the luggage limitations; you may need to wash your smalls though. I guess close encounters with apex predators might have some unintended consequences in that department. It’s a weird thing to get your head around, but you probably only need to pack for about 3 days, regardless of how long you’re staying.

Now we get on to the juicy part: what to wear.

Oh. My. God.

Lots people were dressed like… Let’s say a paratrooper crossed with Crocodile Dundee – except that they were mainly in their 60s and and from Surrey. I admit that I packed what I jokingly call my high performance trousers, a pair of middle-age affirming Rohans that I bought nearly 20 years ago. These have been quite useful for other trips down the years as they are fast drying (or what the Rohan blurb would probably call something like ‘UV activated surfactant wicking’, under a picture of someone rugged pointing meaningfully at the horizon). For this holiday, the most active we got was climbing into the jeeps. If your trousers need to be fast drying, it’s most likely because you spilled some white wine on them.

None of the big cats can see in colour [well, they have very limited colour perception], so wearing your army issue greens and browns is largely pointless. I asked two of our guides about this separately and they both agreed. One, a former soldier, joked about having to take cover. If your last line of defence is pattern dispersal, you’re screwed. The only rule is ‘not very bright’: if you are shuffling around in the jeep in your disco shirt, it may break the illusion that the vehicle is a single entity which the cat will ignore. Other colours may have a bearing on insects: wearing black will obviously make you sweat like one of these:

The final packing observation is about dust. The delta is in the Kalahari Basin so everything that isn’t wet is covered in a very fine sand, and it gets everywhere. We saw a few people wearing the sort of masks you see cycle couriers wearing. I saw one person who was wearing a mask, untinted skiing goggles, a hat and a scarf wrapped over everything. If you can imagine a Tusken Raider with an expensive jacket and a Nikon… I ended up improvising with one of my wife’s scarves. The dust is quite abrasive: I’ve noticed that Touch ID on my iPhone has stopped recognising my thumb print on my right hand, which has worn down to nothing. It’s probably not very good for you over the long term.

Kit: Wins and Fails

I brought two lenses: a 24-105L and my 100-400L. I also took my 1.4x extender, which I used for a couple of bird shots and the aard-animals (which I’ll come back to), which we couldn’t get close to. Having to focus manually with it is a pain in the arse. I could have left the walkabout lens at home. My wife’s OnePlus has a fantastic camera, and I was conscious of getting dust on the sensor with changing lenses. I’m going to get my camera body serviced at some point over the summer. I must have taken it in and out of my bag hundreds of times over the course of the holiday to try to minimise the dust exposure, but it’s got to have been affected by it.

One piece of kit that served me particularly well was a pair of noise cancelling Bose earphones which I’d researched, and bought in Duty Free on the way out – QuietComfort 20s. They were fantastic for the flights (particularly the small planes). The camps we stayed in were universally noisy at night – both wildlife and, at Kanana, some sort of generator or water heater. I’m a light sleeper so they were a godsend.

The biggest fail was inconsequential but amusing: my FitBit. With the shaking around on game drives I got credited with tens of thousands of steps that I didn’t take. On one record breaking day that I barely walked the length of myself I apparently clocked up 29k.

Masuwe Camp, Zimbabwe

We flew into Jo’burg with Virgin Atlantic, our first time on a 787. I was particularly taken with the button to tint the windows instead of having an old school sliding shutter. It also managed to land in ‘mist’ (which in this case is a euphemism for ‘fog’): we were told we were making a ‘special landing’ (that got our attention!), which required us to turn off all electronic equipment, including kit already in flight mode. The continuing mist then caused a 3 hour delay to our hop to Vic Falls airport in Zimbabwe. The queuing for visas there was farcical: you really need to know in advance what you want [we needed a Kaza visa for Zambia] and it was fairly apparent that most people didn’t.

Our guide picked us up and drove us to Masuwe Camp. We were the only guests there for the two nights we stayed, and it was fantastic. We dumped our bags and went straight out on a game drive, where we saw some elands (massive antelopes) which are a little uncommon, and then came back for dinner. I think the chef was bored: he really pushed the boat out.

The reason the video above is quite grainy is because it was sunset, which is way past my long lens’ bedtime.

The camp has an artificial water hole which attracts a range of animals (mainly elephants and buffalo). It was good fun sitting up on the balcony watching the passing traffic.

No cats though. We had a couple of raiding parties: vervets. Our first morning, they stole the jam from our table and, on the second, the toast. On the latter occasion I tried shooing the thing off with my napkin. It paused for a heartbeat and mentally went ‘yeah, right’, and ignored me, picking up the slices it had knocked onto the ground one at a time. I know from previous holidays that they’re dangerous, so I was pretty half-hearted about it.

We did wonder if they saved any of the jam from the morning before…

All of the camps we stayed in had a policy of accompanying the guests to their rooms after sundown. I initially thought this was a bit of theatre, up until the point on the first night when we couldn’t get back to our room because a buffalo decided to come and have a drink from the swimming pool.

On our first full day we had a trip to the falls (which were breathtaking), which we followed with a walk across the border for an hour in Zambia. One of the guys in work (Andre) has been to 120 countries, so I’m determined to clock up as many as we can! Anyway, apart from a fantastic view of the falls from a bridge on the other side of the border, it was a bit sketchy: a very hard sell from a couple of hawkers who walked with us for about 5 minutes. It was just the right side of threatening.

We rounded off our last full day in Zimbabwe with a pleasant enough – by which I mean boozy – boat trip on the Zambezi. Wildlife-wise it was a mix of hippos and birds.

Chobe Elephant Lodge, Botswana

We had a short drive across the border, via Kasane airport, to our next lodge which was just outside the Chobe national park. The routine there was the same for the rest of the holiday: up before 6; breakfast at half past; out for the first drive; back for about 11:30; lunch at midday; break until 3 (because it’s hot enough even at this time of the year to reduce the animal activity); ‘high tea’, and then out for the second drive or boat trip.

We had our first lion encounters in Chobe, which was fascinating. We also had an obscured view of them munching on something unlucky on our second day. Towards the end of our stay we had a pretty interesting boat trip, the highlight of which was watching a small herd of elephants crossing the Chobe river.

This cracked us up: it’s a group of young elephants ‘head-waggling’: our guide said that when they are this young they have trouble controlling their heads because of how heavy they are. I’ve subsequently googled it and there may be other explanations…

…regardless, it reminded me of this:

Okuti Camp, Botswana

After 3 nights in Chobe we had our first light aircraft transfer to the Delta. It was 55 minutes of sheer hell. My wife loved it. As a fairly nervous passenger at the best of times, I found that by the third one I’d got a bit more used to them, but I’ll never get to a point where I enjoy them.

The Okuti camp was absolutely stunning. We ended up staying in a family unit – basically a permanent tent-like structure, with a balcony looking onto a lagoon. We’ve been lucky enough to stay at some pretty fancy places down the years, and Okuti was right up there with the best of them.

The staff were amazing. On our last night, we were surprised with a private dining experience – they had set up a table on one of the remote parts of the raised walkway around the camp, surrounded in candles – to celebrate a significant birthday my wife had a few months back. We hadn’t mentioned it, so it must have been passed on by our travel company. It was a really nice touch. So we ate our fantastic meal and drank champagne, listening to hippos grumbling and vaguely wondering if it was safe.

Kanana Camp, Botswana

Our last two nights were in Kanana, via a 25 minute flight on a 5 seater Cessna. That suffered from the strangest turbulence I’ve ever encountered. Imagine sitting in an old mini, which is suspended – and swinging wildly from – a rope, but 4.5k feet in the air. Once again, my wife loved it.

The nutter.

Kanana is in a private concession. This was a new one on me: it means the guides are allowed to drive off-road. The animals are still completely free to wander: the only fences are there to try to keep the larger creatures out of the camp.

The already-impressive game moved up a notch at this place.

This is one of my favourite photos from the trip:

The Aard-animals

I’m going to include a couple of shots that aren’t great, but which are of animals that are less common to see. First up we have the aardwolves, having an intimate moment in a not particularly intimate location (i.e., in plain sight):

I’d never heard of these before – I think they look a bit like a science project that went a bit wrong. We were quite a long way from the loving couple. With the 1.4x extender, I’ve found that adjusting the focus while holding the shutter release down (firing off about half a dozen shots) generally gives some reasonable results. It’s not pin-sharp, but it’s the best I got.

Next up we have an aardvark:

The sun was going down when I took this so I really pushed the ISO. I jammed the camera into the arm rest on the jeep to keep it steady for the slow shutter. It’s ok, and about as good as I could have hoped for. They are odd looking spuds, got to be said.

…And home again

The trip home was a slog. A 25 minute flight – which my wife sat in the co-pilot’s seat for – on a light aircraft, which took us to Maun. From there we got on a reassuringly large SA Airways flight back to Jo’burg. That flight was notable for having the most bizarre food we’ve had since our fruit salad with prawns on an internal flight in Vietnam 10 years ago. I had cold meatballs, served with what appeared to be minced up pasta mixed with coleslaw.

Yum.

The flight from Jo’burg was long but uneventful. And so we are back in the startlingly grey Blighty, fatter than when we left, and talking about nothing except the wildlife, the hospitality and the downright fabulousness of Botswana.

I’ll add a few more pics and videos when I get round to it.