A pair of cheetah in the Mababe Private Reserve, which is near the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Strangely, these were the only big cats we saw on the trip. 

I’ve been lucky to see quite a few cheetah over the years, but these two were particularly spectacular.

I included lots of meerkat pictures in my post about Planet Baobab. But I don’t think I can post too many shots of this meerkat swallowing a scorpion.

Also, in the previous post I neglected to include this picture of a tiny baby meerkat yawning.

Also in the “incredible small mammal sightings” category, we saw this African wildcat during an evening game drive in Mababe. We also saw its kitten (!) in a burrow nearby but I couldn’t get a good picture.

There are an insane number of elephants in Botswana. I took hundreds of photos and videos of them but I think this is my favorite.

I like this one too.

Elephants (and a few zebras) around a waterhole during a sudden dust storm in the Boteti riverbed. The winds were crazy during our evening game drive at Boteti (read more about Boteti in my previous post), which was rather unpleasant but also created some great photo-ops.

Speaking of zebras, here’s Tessa in a zebra-print dress looking down on a dusty dazzle of zebra. Boteti experiences a huge zebra migration every year between May and September.

More zebras in the dust.

As I mentioned previously, at Chora Adventure Camp we slept right next to a pool with a pod of hippos. The hippos examined us carefully on the day we arrived (shown here), but ignored us from then on.

It was fun watching this hippo walking toward the water (an unusual sighting during daylight hours) at Boteti.

Buffalo, the most underrated of the Big 5.

They always look so quizzical.

A buffalo at sunrise.

A fluffy pile of hyena pups.

Many, many giraffes. (Here’s my fave.)

Wildebeests — ugly yet lovable.

Not a very good picture, but this is a buck I had never seen before called a red lechwe. I took the picture during our mokoro (traditional canoe) outing and island walk on the Okavango Delta. We did the mokoro outing as a day trip, which I wouldn’t necessarily recommend — it was too short and too hot in the middle of the day — but we were still glad we did it. (If I ever go to the Delta again, I’ll opt for an overnight mokoro trip.)

Not an animal photo, but here’s a shot of Michelle and Tessa in a mokoro with their poler (in case you’re wondering what the mokoro ride looks like).

This Verreaux’s eagle-owl, also known as a giant eagle-owl, lived in a nest above the hippo pool at Chora Adventure Camp. As you can see, the Verreaux’s eagle-owl has pink eyelids! We also glimpsed its chick in the nest.

The Southern ground hornbill, ugliest and coolest of all African birds.

A brilliantly hued little bee-eater.

The lilac-breasted roller, one of the most well-loved birds of the African savannah.

A Bateleur eagle.

Not a bird per se. But Team, our mokoro guide, showed us these eggs and explained how a white crowned lapwing laid them on a pile of animal dung as camouflage. So cool! I hope the chicks made it.

Also not a bird photo, but I have to include this shot of Team laughing with my friends. They were laughing because I had just fallen into an aardvark burrow less than five minutes after Team warned us not to fall into an aardvark burrow. (I was dusty but fine.)

My favorite bird photo from the trip: a Kalahari scrub robin about to chow down on a beetle.