Moremi Wilderness

Most of Africa is of course no longer the wild jungle and savanna of the past. There are tracks, roads, villages, cities, farms and civilization, and although life is very different for most than Canadian life, it's also not like it was a century or two ago.
But Botswana has a vast area that's completely wild, the Moremi Game Reserve, part of the huge Okavanga Delta. The reserve has no fences, and the wildlife is free to roam for hundreds of kilometers, including through the surrounding villages and campsites. A small number of campsites are available, and the roads require a four wheel drive truck and a lot of nerve. Here's a note I wrote on our first Moremi night:

April 5 at our campfire in Kwai campground, Moremi Wildlife reserve in the Okavanga Delta, Botswana. Burning big hunks of Mopane, beautiful resinous red wood, seems a shame to burn, but they're deadfalls and to tough to be worked, and it gives some income to the Kwai community.
Many nights we 'brai' (BBQ) , Piri Pick chicken, beef, boervos (sausage), or game like Kudzu or Springbok, but tonight the fire is just to keep the beasts at bay. It's not really dangerous, but in Moremi there are no game fences, so anything can wander through: various antelope, wildebeast, Cape buffalo, zebras, baboons and hyenas to name a few. And lions!, who supposedly won't attack you're in a tent. So we're advised to stay by the fire or in the tent, and definitely not walk to the washrooms at night. Sitting by the fire glow, Jen heard a noise, shone a light, and there edging towards us was a very large hyena, a scary looking thing in the dark with glowing eyes. We shoed off two of them, but it feels like they're still lurking, so we moved inside after singing a couple of songs on the uke (wards off anything...). 

At our final Moremi night we had hippos munching grass ten feet from where we were supposedly sleeping. Elephants were feeding too, and we heard lions roaring in the distance. Very exhilarating, but even better are the daylight drives, meandering along sand tracks, hoping not to get stuck, lost or eaten. We had tons of beautiful encounters, all on our own, with elephants, hippos, giraffes, impala, Cape buffalo, zebras, cranes, storks, kingfishers, eagles, darters, geese, shrikes, sunbirds, hyenas, wildebeasts, water buck and many more, continuosly, all in natural surroundings, often by surprise as you broke out of a forest, or rounded a corner or came upon a waterhole. A couple of boat rides with questionable drivers (tendency to race madly!) Filled in the aquatic side, as Moremi is bounded by two river systems. We spent 5 days there and never tired of the magical landscapes and wilderness experiences.