Duba Plains Camp, Okavango Delta, Botswana

Duba Plains is Africa at its most basic, but also at its most dramatic! Duba Plains is simply the best place to go if you want to try and watch a hunt and kill occur. This area is renowned for it’s lion and buffalo interaction, so this is big hunter and very dangerous and capable prey that often battles back resulting in an epic event. Predators at Duba Plains mostly hunt during the day and typically anywhere from 5 to 15 kills are witnessed on game drives each month, with many, many more hunting interactions occurring to achieve that number of successful kills. Watching the enormous and courageous Duba Plains buffalo bulls defend the herd can be as awe inspiring as a successful kill. Duba Plains lacks a lot of the mammal diversity seen in other areas so the focus here is to find lions or the large buffalo herd and wait until they interact, thus virtually every drive centers on observing the two species and watching the action. Aardwolves, spotted hyenas, elephant breeding herds, warthogs, and red lechwe are some of the other species that frequent the area. Duba Plains is also very rich in birdlife.

The Duba concession (known as Kwedi Reserve) is in one of the most remote areas of the Okavango Delta and it is one of the largest private areas with 30,000 hectares reserved for just the single camp. The Duba concession consists of vast open plains with small palm islands of thick vegetation as well as beautiful channels of water. The channels can restrict where the vehicle can go and some portions of the Duba Plains have not been reached in recent years. Activities are primarily game drives, with night drives, nature walks and mokoro (dugout canoe) trips when the flood is in, normally May through September.

Accommodation at Duba Plains consists of just six roomy tents with an en-suite bathroom, an outside shower, and a veranda overlooking a gorgeous floodplain. The thatch-roofed lounge, dining room and bar areas are raised on platforms along with a small swimming pool. Duba Plains is one of the smaller camps around - there is definitely an intimate feel here and it has been consistently one of the best managed camps in Botswana.

The camp atmosphere, remote setting, and dynamic predator action at Duba Plains make this one of my most highly recommended camps in all of Africa.