May 2022 – The Carefree Photographer

Pangolin was conceived by two individuals in 2011, who saw a potential demand for photographic support of wildlife safaris in Botswana. They began with conducted photo safaris, added a houseboat on the Chobe, then a hotel in Kasane in 2018. The hotel has 14 rooms and overlooks the Chobe River form an elevated site in Kasane. The boat dock is only five minutes away. Pangolin has several eight chair photo boats, each with swivel chairs and gimbel arrangements for guest’s cameras. Each trip is led by a photo professional; in our case we were well educated by Dennis, who happened to be a high school classmate of our friend Bee of Elephant Havens.

The hotel is very comfortable, and has a main hall with mounted photos taken by their professional. Rooms are quite large and rather rustic in nature with exposed piping and so on. Meals were very nice, and served in a group setting which made making acquaintances quite easy.

Karen and I can certainly recommend Pangolin as a short stop at the end of a safari, or as a focused stay to learn the art of wildlife photography.

Images – Grant

Images – Karen

So now that COVID has at least diminished and travel seems safe enough, we continued our love for Botswana with a group trip originally planned for 2020. The trip took place in March of this year, with a group of eight – six had been with us on at least one prior trip. We began with a few days at Elephant Havens – more later. Then we spent four nights at three camps. These included Great Plains Conservation’s Selinda Camp in the Linyanti region, then Kwara Camp (Kwando Concession) in the Okavango Delta and finally Muchenje Camp on the Chobe River near Kasane.

Some of us finished with one night at Pangolin’s photo lodge in Kasana, and enjoyed a late afternoon photo trip on the Chobe River, followed by an early morning reprise. Both were on their well known photo boats, each outfitted with eight swivel chairs and gimbels for our cameras.

This Botswana series of blogs with start with Pangolin, and then each of the three safari camps. Those will feature the camps first, then images of the primary wildlife we experienced. Hope you enjoy the series. This may be interupted from time to time with other experiences. For example we about to embark on a two week tour of Morocco.