Laura's Safari Jounal: Day 3...

The morning rose crisp and pale, the pans glowing white beneath the first light. We climbed onto the roof seats of the Land Rover, wind rushing against our faces, the world spread wide around us. From up high, the view was endless: wildebeest shifting in herds, springbok leaping through the grass, and flamingos standing like painted brushstrokes in shallow water. The desert is deceptive - what seems barren from a distance is teeming with life up close.

Over coffee, Roan taught me more about tracking. We “tracked” a dead jackal near a watering hole and concluded it had likely died of natural causes, but had been dragged in a circle and picked clean by a Maribou stork. One of our guides joked that it’s a bird so ugly that “only a mother could love.”

Back in the vehicle, we spotted a secretary bird being chased by two black-backed jackals. At first, we assumed it had stolen food. But the guides debated quietly, and another theory emerged - that the bird may have taken a jackal pup. The chase lasted too long for play.

Later, we waved goodbye to our wildebeest friends - Simon, Peeping Tom, and the rest of the San Camp crew - and made our way to Maun to begin the next leg of the journey. Our path shifted north-east, into the green veins of the Okavango Delta. For Patrick and Suzanne, the helicopter ride was their first “flip,” as Roan called it. From the air, the Delta was a revelation. Hippos carved channels like veins, pushing water into new paths. Elephants lumbered across the plains. Giraffes stretched toward the trees. For twenty minutes, we floated over paradise - and then dropped down into the wild heart of it.

Beagle Camp sits on seventy-four thousand acres of untouched wilderness. The tents were canvas, but inside we were met with full beds, compost toilets, and bucket showers that felt indulgent beneath the open sky. The lack of WiFi sealed it - this wasn’t a place to disappear into distraction, but to sink into the wild. Isolation like this is rare. The Okavango Delta is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, yet its future is fragile. Upstream water use and climate change threaten to choke the floods that sustain it. What feels eternal when you stand there is, in truth, delicate.

As if to underline just how remote and protected this place was, one of the first things we came across was the massive skull of a bull elephant - tusks still intact, lying untouched in the sand. Out here, there is nothing to disturb it. That afternoon, we found a tower of giraffe watching us as we enjoyed our sundowners and the first Delta sunset. Suzanne had to be peeled away when the light finally faded - as transfixed by them as they were by her.

On the road back to camp, our spotlight swept across the grasses and caught the eye shine of an aardwolf - a shy, nocturnal creature from the hyena family that many never see in a lifetime of safaris. It felt like a sign. A quiet promise of the things still to come.

The night ended with comedy. After dinner - a delicious meal prepared by Chef Issa - Dad and Suzanne startled a hippo grazing outside their tent. It bolted into the water, bellowing with what sounded like a mix of panic and rage. Roan and I stayed up listening to it stomp and splash in the dark. It sounded like an angry toddler in the bath - but we later learned that it was just the sound of one very annoyed hippo eating grass. Loudly.

Laura xxx