Manyelanong Game Reserve

Manyelanong is the name of the hill north of the village Otse, which is  about 15km outside Lobatse on the Gaborone road.

In the sheer cliffs of the hills, the small Manyelanong Game Reserve protects a breeding colony of Cape vultures.

The site was recognized for many years as Otse Vulture Colony. vacations in Botswana

The Cape vulture is a dying out species and entirely protected by the laws of Botswana.

Cape vultures have stayed in Manyelanong for hundreds of years, but in the very last 40 years or so their population has reduced significantly.

In the late 1960s, the inhabitants dropped to 50 pair, but numbers have since improved. At the moment there are just fewer than 70 breeding pairs of birds in the colony, but it is still part of the main colonies of vultures in Botswana.

The vultures can normally be noticeably seen flying over the area and, during the season, the young birds are resting on the rocks, which cover up the hill.

Guests are asked not to make unnecessary noise, to upset the birds in anyway or leave any food dumped around. At the moment it is thought that the birds fly a number of hundreds of kilometers to the Kalahari Desert to hunt for food, holidays in Botswana

Close by, north next to the western side of Manyelanong Hill, is Refuge Cave, a big fault 50m up the cliff. Pottery has been discovered here, and the cave was perhaps used as a hiding place in the period of the Boer invasions of the 1870s.