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Cabin Locations

KathrynH

Are there any opinions about where in the camps one wishes to be located? Our group will require two cabins and we are wondering whether we should ask the tour director for one cabin/ tent to be close to the breakfast restaurants and the other cabin/ tent be located at the far reaches of the campgrounds. Some of us would enjoy encountering animals. Was there competition for the remote tent locations?

When we went tiger spotting on the India and Nepal Tour in 2015, our camp required that we phone ahead for an escort to travel from treehouse to clubouse even though the route was lit with many lanterns. (A female tiger's paw print had been spotted on the camp trails, so it was a reasonable precaution.) When we were in the Serengeti on the K&T tour, we were asked to request a Masai escort as we walked along the raised pathway at night. (Only small animals were seen when the escorts shined their lights below as we walked along the raised path.) Others having large parties during our K&T tour split themselves into several cabins/ tents in different locations to maximize the chances of having animal encounters to brag about. It made no difference in the Masai Mara camp which was enclosed, but the earlier camps seemed to have more encounters at the far ends of the camp layouts.

What has been the experience in the Botswana campsites? Does location make any difference? Are there more adventures when one sleeps far from the central clubhouse? We are planning to be there in the April climate. Are there more encounters during the dry season?

Comments

British

The camps are quite small, so where your tent is located hardly matters, but I always thought it was up to the hotel/camp to chose where your room is, apart from bed size preferences. We all pay the same for this tour and I would expect everyone to be treated equally. Tauck seem to be pretty good at this in my experience.
You must be escorted back and forth to your tent at night. And sometimes in the day you may encounter an animal, I don't think any of the locations have fencing on this tour. One evening, we could not get to our tent because there was a large elephant next to our entrance. One of the guides asked us to shelter at a distance while he tried to see if he could lure it away, it was actually quite a scary experience for us and the guide, we were stranded for ages. At Camp Kalahari, an elephant was at the entrance to a single lady's tent and she was basically marooned in her tent for maybe a couple of hours.
If you are going in April, it is at the end of the wet season and only the start of the dry season, so there will still be plenty of tall grass and water around, much harder to spot any animals near your accommodation, so you will have to be more cautious when walking from your tent durind the day too.

Robba

I agree with British comments. The camps are quite small and only have about 12 tents. When we were at Eagle Island there was only one couple that was not part of our Tauck group. All of the other tents were used by Tauck.

I don't think that the animals care about the location of a tent within a camp. When we were at the Khwai River Lodge an elephant walked right up to a tree in front of the main lodge to shake the fruit off the tree in order to eat it. This occurred late in the afternoon when we were all at the front of the lodge to get into our safari vehicles. We also saw elephants there get very close to the pool in mid afternoon, which was located right next to the main lodge.