Overview

Sable Alley was our first Okavango camp, and our introduction to what safari in the delta actually feels like. It’s the more affordable of our two camps — which is relative, this being the Okavango — but hardly roughing it. The tents are canvas on the outside, with wooden structures inside framing a perfectly modern bathroom: sinks, flush toilets, a full shower, and an outdoor shower facing the hippo pool. Showering in the open while staring at hippos is definitely memorable. Hopefully not for the hippos.

The camp sits on 12 tents spread out along the Khwai River. We arrived from Victoria Falls via a drive to the Botswana border and a short flight from Kasane — an airport that was surprisingly modern, brand new when we passed through.

For general information on the Okavango, see the Okavango overview for background on the delta overall.

The Floods

We were there during flood season, which shapes everything about how you move through the delta. The roads were underwater — typically 1–2 feet deep, occasionally more. The game drives crossed these flooded tracks routinely, which felt alarming the first time and unremarkable by the third day.

Wildlife Highlights

The standout sighting at Sable Alley was a young male leopard we stayed with for a good 40 minutes. He was hunting, scanning, drinking, entirely indifferent to our truck. The camouflage, the musculature of those front legs, the black collar in his markings — photographs don’t capture it the way 20 feet does.

Elephants were everywhere — to the point that by the end of the trip our group was joking about the “elusive elephant” on our 25th sighting of the day. The older adults generally ignore the trucks and keep eating. One young male will typically do a lot of mock-charging and ear-flapping to make sure you take him seriously. On our last morning game drive at Sable Alley we were literally in the middle of a herd of dozens, coming from the left toward the water on the right, and they just kept coming. Back at camp, everyone was envious. Elephants also came into camp regularly — one delayed our return to lunch by parking itself at our tent door.

We had three lion cub sightings across the whole trip; one of them was here.

We saw relatively few zebras at Sable Alley until the last day; at North Island they were everywhere. We’re not entirely sure why — possibly fencing used to protect nearby livestock affecting migration patterns. In the Serengeti you see hundreds of wildebeest and a handful of zebra; here it was roughly the reverse. We wish we understood the dynamics better.

All three guides across two countries made the same joke: the nickname for Impala is “McDonalds” because you see them everywhere. At least 5–10 sightings a day. They’re not unattractive antelope, but you stop photographing them after day two.

Boating Adventures

Our guide CJ took us out on the Khwai River at sunset — the profile of dead trees against the near-equatorial sun, hippos in the foreground. One of the quieter hours of the trip.

Interestingly, CJ is of the San tribe, which makes up less than 3% of the population of Botswana. They are one of the most ancient people on earth.

Early white settlers called them “Bushmen” — the same patronizing framing that runs through the 1980 film “The Gods Must Be Crazy”. They were semi-nomadic until the 1960s before the government largely convinced (forced?) them to settle into villages. This meant that CJ (he looked to be in his 40s?) remembers his grandfather who … lived much of his life as a hunter-gatherer, unchanged as far as I can tell from how his tribe had lived for thousands of years.

His outdoor sense was immediately apparent: he read which direction animals were looking, identified alarm calls from other species, tracked footprint direction in ways we would never have registered on our own. Having him as a guide changed how we understood what we were looking at.

Where We Stayed

Sable Alley — 12 tents, Khwai Reserve, well-run, comfortable without being ostentatious. The main area and firepit face the water. The two chairs facing the hippo pool got a lot of use by our group.