Oliver Furgård

I think my time at the Okavango Wilderness Project was one of the coolest weeks I've ever had in my life.

I'm from Sweden, so during my time on the project, we came across many birds and mammals that I'd never seen before. I used the bird books that I bought when I arrived in Johannesburg a lot because we saw so many different species! It was really fun to learn more about them and all the African mammals too.

I think the diversity of wildlife in the Okavango is like nothing I've seen before. You have birds and small animals everywhere. It's truly something else.

During my week in Botswana, I went on the Mokoro boat trip where we had a really good conversation about the Okavango Delta, and I learned that the area was famous for wild dogs. When I got back to camp and told the team about it and how we were going to see wild dogs the next day, they laughed because they knew how difficult they were to find. Then, the next day, we actually saw them! It was crazy. 

Another incredible experience was watching lions feeding on a giraffe. I'd been on safari once before and had seen a leopard eating an impala that was already dead, but this was something completely different. Of course, you feel bad for the giraffe, but in this case, this giraffe had died of natural causes, so it was really special to see a big lion feeding on such a big giraffe. Two days later, we returned to the same area, and there were 24 hyenas around the giraffe, which was almost completely gone. I thought that was incredible. You really get to see how the ecosystem works.

There were also some amazing experiences just from living out in the bush. I remember one night, I fell asleep around nine o'clock and woke up at eleven because I could hear something near the camp. We'd been told that we had to stay inside our tents throughout the night for our own safety. The next morning, one of the project staff told me there had been six hyenas in the camp trying to take a rubbish bin. You could even see the bite marks in the bins!

Almost every night we could hear lions roaring too. Lying in a completely dark tent, hearing those animals outside, was really special. Another time, when we were camping by the Khwai River, I was standing outside brushing my teeth in the dark with my flashlight. Suddenly, I heard a noise, and there was a hyena in the distance! I shone my light towards it, and it went away. It was a little scary at the time, but now I think it's really cool. You feel like you're in the animals' territory. It's a completely different feeling when you're out there with animals that are totally wild.

One of them even taught me some local words, so I could speak a little bit of Setswana. We learnt about different trees, birds and animals, and the guides seemed to remember every bird we saw. We learnt so many bird species, as well as all the other wildlife around us.

Every day you learnt something new, and that was all because of them. I think that's one of the reasons the Okavango was on another level for me. I learnt so much about the wildlife, the area, the ecosystem and how everything works. I really want to go back.

After the Okavango, I travelled to Phinda Wildlife Research Project in South Africa. The two projects were completely different, and I think they were a really good combination. The diversity of wildlife in the Okavango was unlike anything I'd seen before, but at Phinda we saw more of certain animals, including lots of lions, cheetahs and rhinos. The views at Phinda were amazing too. I think we saw around 15 rhinos every day, and we even saw two black rhinos, which was really cool.

One of my favourite activities at Phinda was bird ringing (this involves tagging the birds by putting a small ring around their leg, then releasing them so they can be monitored). We spent two days doing it, and I think we tagged around 65 birds from 35 different species. That was really cool. We also spent time doing soil sampling and working with camera traps, including changing the batteries and looking at some of the photographs. We could see different animals in the images, including some of the more elusive species like serval cats that are difficult to spot in person. It was interesting to experience two projects in such different areas and see how differently the wildlife and the reserves are managed.

I originally really wanted to go to the Okavango, but when I spoke to African Conservation Experience (ACE), we also talked about Phinda.

Having ACE organise the travel and meet me at the airport was really helpful, especially when I first arrived. Before travelling, people at home would ask me if I knew exactly what I was going to do, and I'd say, "Not exactly, but I'll see when I get there!" So it was really good to meet the ACE team when I arrived and have everything explained to me, including more information about the projects and the logistics of what would happen next. Not having to think about all the travel arrangements myself helped a lot.

Both projects gave me the opportunity to spend time around completely wild animals, which is something I really wanted from this experience. The diversity of wildlife, the guides, the things we learnt and the experience of being out in the bush were all incredible.

Every day was something new, and I learnt so much more about the wildlife, the area and how the whole ecosystem works. I really want to go back to the projects, and I'd love to do more wildlife monitoring experiences where the animals are completely wild like this in the future