Safari advice: Oly 40-150 Pro, Pany 100-400 or Oly 50-200?

anupamkatkar wrote:

drmarkf wrote:

My first blog posts from Botswana, and all the images on these are with the 300 or 40-150:

https://www.microcontrast.com/new-blog/2018/11/30/panthera-pardus-the-leopard

https://www.microcontrast.com/new-blog/2018/11/2/patience-rewarded

https://www.microcontrast.com/new-blog/2018/11/8/rehabilitating-the-hyena

These are stunning! I especially loved 'Patience Rewarded'. Botswana is my dream safari destination. That's where I'd have headed to next year, if I could have afforded it. Thanks for sharing your photos!

Thank you.

Yes it’s probaly the most expensive safari destination, but the density of good sighting (not just of Big 5 animals) is the highest I’ve ever seen, and the standard of guiding is excellent (they have a national guiding school I think).

We met a number of people who were staying at lodges and taking their game drives, but self driving between the lodges rather than flying or going on a fully-arranged multicentre trip with a safari specialist. The roads between lodges seemed reasonable if you were confident at 4wd driving, so that might be a more economical way to do it.

In contrast, we saw a series of self-drivers actually in parks doing game drives who’d got stuck in soft sand, even with 4wd. This happens so often that a lot of lodge guides don’t stop, but leave them there to be pulled out by park staff at the end of the day. So I’d suggest that unless you really knew what you were doing, and were preferably in a group of more than one vehicle, you didn’t self drive in parks there. The roads are a lot tougher than I’ve ever seen in the Kruger or Madikwe, for example.