An Okavango safari in Paradise

The song is the culmination of Mombo’s storied celebration of the country’s cultural diversity, set up in the camp’s open-air boma around a blazing bonfire, and is the last in a set of pre-dinner entertainment for guests. What follows is a feast of traditional culinary treats – morogo (spinach) and several other vegetable pots, samp (dehulled and coarsely crushed maize kernels cooked to a creamy consistency), oxtail stew and braaied (barbequed) meats.

The very best of South African fine wines are paired with every meal, and this evening’s offering was no different – a Saxenburg Shiraz, and truly fabulous Vondeling Babiana, a barrel-matured blend of Chenin Blanc, Viognier and Rousanne – elegant oak and quite Rhône in style. An inspection of the enviably stocked wine cellar is also available to anyone who asks. 

Mombo – Mmadikampa, Mother of all Camps – is the jewel in the crown of Wilderness’ 13 luxury safari lodges set across Botswana’s most pristine and remote ecotourism areas.

The first iteration of Mombo opened in 1990. One of the first permanent higher-end safari camps established in the country’s nascent safari tourism, it is situated in a famously productive wildlife area inside Moremi Game Reserve in the Okavango Delta, a World Heritage Site and wetland wonder of extraordinary scenic beauty – made all the more beautiful for its setting in the heart of the semi-arid Kalahari Desert landscape that covers most of Botswana.

Completely rebuilt in 2018, Mombo is a sublime tribute to the pioneers of safari and exploration a century and more ago. Space here is arguably the ultimate luxury, with voluminous guest rooms and the public gathering spaces open to an endless floodplain, currently filled edge-to-edge with the aforementioned bell frogs. Being unfenced, lions, leopards, buffalos and elephants wander through the camp and under the raised walkways at night, feeding and sleeping; there is literally no gap between where Mombo ends and the wilderness begins (to paraphrase a favourite alt.indie band’s lyric). 

Beautiful Botswana… heavy, late-season rain (pula, also the word for ‘blessing’ and ‘luck’) across the country’s safari areas have filled pans and channels that usually only hold water when the annual inundation comes in around late April and May. The dry season (May–October) in the Okavango Delta is an anomaly of leafless trees and dried grasses providing exceptional viewing of the wildlife that has moved closer to the shimmering water sources. Now, with all the standing water available, Mombo is already an Eden of incomparable animal sightings.

On our first late-afternoon game drive, the birdlife alone numbered in the scores. Two lifers ticked within an hour – a flock of ruffs in a shallow pan, and a dwarf bittern – with a black-faced waxbill the third on our last short early-morning drive. 

In between, the sightings were an embarrassment of riches: the Mathatha lion pride resting after a kill; wildebeest backlit in the last light; a line of zebras sploshing through a full floodplain; lechwe thundering across a pan; 20 or more elephants crossing a brimming permanent channel, emerging in single file with a perfectly aligned water-level line . And all the while buffalos up to their ‘wheel arches’, muzzles down feeding in the camp’s water-filled plain, not looking up once. All set against a lush backdrop of baobabs, jackalberries, rain trees and leadwoods still in leaf, and lush, horizon-wide emerald-green floodplains. 

‘This is shoulder season, a post-summer green season and pre-winter dry season “holding pattern” of weather,’ notes our guide, Emang. A 22-year Wilderness veteran, he has worked most of those years at Mombo, and several at Vumbura Plains, a 12-minute helicopter ride away, on the north-eastern edge of the Delta, approaching the Selinda Spillway and gateway to the Linyanti and Chobe regions. ‘The annual water inflow forms a natural barrier that drives the animals to Mombo’s dryland area, but with this unseasonal, high level right now, we’ve been blessed with an abundance of every species within just a few square kilometres.’

Special mention needs to be made of Legadima and her legacy. Star of the famed Joubert documentary, 'Eye of the Leopard', this legendary Mombo cat’s lineage is alive and well in the four females we saw – Naledi with twins, Marotlhodi with a year-old male cub, Phefo, who had evidently given birth within the last week, and Leru, a recently independent youngster herself – as well as the area’s magnificent dominant male, Mogaka. 

Beautiful staff… There isn’t a sentient Wilderness guest who isn’t profoundly touched by the warmth of Mombo’s Batswana staff. It’s as though they invented hospitality. With cheek-cracking smiles in the most sincerely happy faces, no request is too much trouble, and they achieve close to psychic levels of anticipating guests’ needs, without the slightest obsequiousness. And everyone remembers your name. 

Beautiful Mombo… As the second line of the song goes, I shall never forget… beautiful Mombo…