Phil West Safaris

18/10/2024

Some more ‘non-Jaguar’ photos and video from our recent Pantanal trip. The baby capybaras in the video are two days old!
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16/10/2024

Just a few of the many many beautiful birds in the Pantanal from the last trip. Ok, I have a thing with Toucans and Aracaris!
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03/10/2024

We are on our way to the Jaguar capital, but yesterday we got an amazing encounter with the rare and elusive Ocelot. In the past we have only had fleeting glimpses and mostly in the early evenings. So this was extra special to see in the mid afternoon.
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02/10/2024

Tracking jaguars in the very hot and dry Pantanal. Yesterday we were very lucky to come across a Jaguar cub, just a few months old, who it seems like might have lost its mother. Old tracks of a female were all around the forest edge, so we’ll try monitor the situation. Tomorrow we head to the Jaguar capital and our excursions will be exclusively by boat rather than by foot or vehicle….
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13/08/2024

World elephant day 2024. This was taken a month ago in Amboseli. Got to be one of the best places in Africa to get views of large breeding herds ( this was one of over 50 that we spent the whole morning with).
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04/08/2024

Further to the previous videos of the pups wailing and some of the helpers failing, here’s a series of photos of some successful pup transports.. from one den to another…
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28/06/2024

Two days ago in the garden of Eden that is the Ngorongoro crater….just stunningly beautiful. Beside all the amazing cat action we had at dawn, we had many beautiful scenes like this one!
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20/06/2024

Kumba… a quite impressive Tiger!
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19/06/2024

Last week we ended our wonderful safari in South Africa at Phinda. One of the focuses was to see Pangolin. For those of you who don’t know, not only is this adorable and endangered animal the most trafficked animal in the world, but probably one of the hardest animals to see in the wild. In fact, it’s a common joke for guides when guests are prompted to ask to see Pangolin.. most safari guides have never seen one! Although they look like Armadillos, they are not actually that closely related to them. At Phinda we went out with the dedicated research team to find one of these Temmincks pangolins, learnt ground breaking new information about them and wandered through thick thornveld watching it feeding. What a privilege. I guess the next stop will be to try and see the giant pangolin in the Congo….
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08/06/2024

A few hundreds photos later and almost a bean bag down…haven’t had time to edit any shots yet…
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07/06/2024

From the relative heat of the Timbavati to the cold of the free state, lions to tigers and lots in between. Having an amazing time …
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05/06/2024

People always ask if one can outrun an elephant, never if you can outrow one. I guess after gym, in the bush, you have to have breakfast with the elies….in the Timbavati right now, at the wonderful Tanda Tula camp..
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29/03/2024

It’s funny how things happen. After all the lion and cheetah action and even the amazing leopard we had had in the central Serengeti, we headed up to the north to look especially for leopard.
A lioness had killed a baby zebra about 20m from my guide tent. I tracked the spoor and that evening we found the culprit on a kopje behind /in camp. With CUBS. Even though we were on a leopard mission this was too good an opportunity to miss..cubs..4-6weeks old, in camp! That night a leopard and a hyena fought over the carcass outside my tent, keeping me up all night.. so exciting,AND the leopard was close by….

The next day- leopard tracks everywhere and headed north out of camp. So we headed to the lioness ‘den’.. wow, the cubs were out in the open playing! At dawn, so we spent a good section of the morning with them.. in view of camp and in sight of a rogue troop of baboons. That afternoon we decided to leave them be and not bring attention to their hiding spot..we continued tracking the leopard but the grass was too long and we were stumped. That night she called, that great sawing sound we all love to hear..OK.. tomorrow I would find her!

The next morning we found lioness tracks going back and forward from the hiding spot.. I figured the lionesses were moving the cubs..we tracked and tracked and even found the cub tracks where they must have been put down. Then the tracks headed into the long grasses and gullies and kopjes we couldnt access. That afternoon we spotted two lioness silhouettes on a kopje and now knew their new hiding spot. Tomorrows focus. As you can tell we had totally (nearly) been distracted from leopards! The next day. Wow! We found the cubs and also found where the lionesses had killed a Buffalo nearby. They had led the cubs to possibly their first meat meal! I said to the other guide this will surely give us a leopard. The final drive that afternoon we found a huge male lion on the carcass being mobbed by a herd of Buffalo and whilst we were making sure the cubs were ok, one of our eagle eyed guests exclaimed.. what’s that on the rock.. we turned to the other side and there was our beautiful leopardess bathed in the last sunlight of the day!

18/03/2024

A couple of weeks ago. We descended into the world famous Ngorongoro crater before dawn. We had multiple lion viewings including a hunt and a stand off between cubs and a herd of Buffalo. we decided to head to a lookout hill to scan for black rhinos but it seemed we weren’t the only ones to be on lookout. We spotted a lioness lurking around sone work vehicles and when we got to the vehicles we were treated to a big yellow cat on a big yellow CAT.. weirdly enough this had been the butt of a joke the week before (!). This is obviously not the first time this lioness has done this.

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# lions # canon photography #

17/03/2024

Due to a cancellation we have four spaces on this wonderful itinerary. A week at the end of September in the northern Pantanal. This is always one of my favorite destinations that I look forward to every year. Myself and my good friend and guide extraordinaire Ricardo Casarin will be leading you in this amazing ecosystem looking for iconic South American species, the highlight of which will be 4 nights with jaguars, giant river otter, hyacinth macaws and more. If anyone is interested please email us at [email protected] for prices and availability
Thx

13/03/2024

Calling all safari guides and botanists.. anyone have any idea what this plant is? We spotted a few of them last week between barafu kopjes and soit le motonyi ..after a lot of heavy rain. Dino J. Martins

28/12/2023

A grand finale of our glorious five days on the Kenyan coast ended with a dinner at the iconic Tamarind restaurant. Eating the iconic crab dishes of Ginger crab, Black pepper crab and roast garlic crab. Look at the size of the claws on this mangrove crab!
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24/12/2023

Goodbye Mauritius. We had a blast. Next and final destination- the Kenyan coast for Christmas.
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❤️

23/09/2023

Throwback to the old days of Karanja. This was one of those special days when we found him standing, hidden in a stream, off of the ol keju rongai in the Maasai Mara. He really was a legend. Thankfully he didn’t die from poaching, one of the few. World rhino day 2023

26/07/2023

And here’s some bear photos from our day visiting Chinitna and Silver Salmon
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25/07/2023

Some Alaska scenery shots from last week…
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20/07/2023

Amazing!

03/07/2023

Game changer..again!

Big thanks to our amazing agents for their unwavering support with the launch of Safari Portal 2.0's Calendar Builder! 🌍📅 We're thrilled to see how this new feature has been a game changer in the itinerary building process. Here's to our agents, the real MVPs 🎉

Special thanks to Zafaris for their amazing review:

‘’Safari Portal was seriously amazing from the get-go, but their new calendar builder has taken it to a whole new level. I'm constantly blown away by how they're always thinking outside the box and actually listening to feedback to come up with brilliant solutions. Their platform saves us a ton of time, and our clients absolutely love the itineraries and detailed final docs they get. Safari Portal is a game-changer for us, no doubt about it!’’
- Cara Lloyd

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24/05/2023

This is a game changer…

11/04/2023

A few highlights of the many features of Safari Portal. Incredible stuff coming soon..get ready…