As a professional travel photographer, Wolf has traveled to over 160 countries around the world. We continue the countdown of his top 10 favorite destinations.
by Michelle Alten
Wolfgang rises before dawn, hops in a four-wheel drive, and rumbles through Botswana’s Okavango Delta, scanning the grassy plains for wildlife. He spots a lioness and her three cubs prowling through wispy brush, searching for prey. Discovering a cluster of foraging warthogs, the lioness begins teaching her cubs the art of hunting. She carefully places her young on one side of the swine then stealthily creeps through the tangle of tall grass to the other side of the beasts. She makes her strategy was clear: you youngsters approach our prey; when the hogs get scared, they will stampede right into my trap. But an impatient cub moves before mom is ready and the startled warthogs dash away. The next day, Wolfgang finds the same group back for lesson two. This time the cubs wait. Once mom positions herself, they chase the hogs into the lioness’s ambush: the fattest critter lands right in the mother’s jowls. It is this opportunity to witness untamed Africa that makes Botswana Wolfgang’s second favorite destination in the world.
In Botswana’s Okavango Delta, Wolf photographs wild dogs tracking lechwe, leopards dragging their bounty up trees to keep it from other predators, and baboon families as they preen and care for each other. The region’s unique environment makes it one of the world’s most spectacular wildlife havens. Here water courses through the land like blood-filled veins and the earth pulses with life. Predators thrive in the water-soaked environment finding a wealth of creatures to hunt. The abundant bio-diversity means zebras, giraffes, impalas, buffalo, hippos, elephants, cheetahs and countless other mammals, along with over 400 bird species, inhabit the region.
Wolfgang has been traveling to Botswana to photograph the wildlife since 1994 when he was first inspired by the magnificent African wilderness. While he laments that earlier, more rustic camps have been replaced with luxury safari lodges, Wolf is still crazy about Botswana and will return in 2014 to follow wild dog hunts, observe intriguing elephant behavior, and capture a Cheetah chase.
