The Southern Africa Adventure: Day 18 Botswana

Day 18 Botswana - Chobe National Park
We travel to Chobe and this afternoon we enjoy a sunset river cruise as the animals are best spotted from the Chobe River. Elephants, Hippo, Crocodiles, Eland and many other creatures reside in Chobe so keep your cameras ready.
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

11th January 2014
We headed to Chobe National Park with high expectations because both Shingi and Zenzo have always said that Chobe is the best park, also Annabel and Joram said they stopped taking photos of elephants because there were so many.

We arrived just before midday and Lisa and I upgraded for two reasons firstly I thought it was going to rain and also because of my itchy rash. I figured that it had started the night before and given I'd been in my silk liner it might have something in it that caused my rash. (that's my story and I'm sticking to it)

Before we left the camp Dipthi told us that she had once seen cheetahs in Chobe but from everything I'd been told previously there have never been cheetahs in Chobe, so when our guide arrived I asked him "if there were any cheetahs in Chobe?"
"no, it's the wrong terrain and environment" was his reply. Just another tall story by Dipthi...
I knew there were leopards and lions so I asked about them.
"yes, and we saw a leopard this morning" he replied and walked away.
Most of the crew hadn't seen a leopard yet, so this was really good news and with that we were off.

Only eight of us had organised to go on an afternoon game drive in Chobe National Park, (Inge, Ingrid, Martina, Christoph, Isabelle, Beatrice, Lisa and me) I suspect that the Brisvegans and a few others were heading straight to the bar. It turned out to be a great decision on our part, the game drive was the best I've ever been on.

Earlier in the day on the way into Chobe we started counting elephants, I think the count was 23 (24 if you include the elephants donk) before we entered the park we decided to stop counting after about 10 minutes in the park. We saw hundreds and hundreds of elephants and on this occasion I'm not kidding, the same went for hippos they were everywhere. Our guide told us that in peak elephant season there is as many as 80,000 elephants in Chobe, now if that is true I'm not sure where they would all fit. It was an unbelievably impressive sight just to see what we estimated to be about 400 to 500 of them.

In regards to the hippos Isabelle spotted one in a pool of water and the guide basically said "don't worry, you'll see lots of them", he was true to his word we saw probably about 100 to 200 of them, with most of them wandering around out of the water. It was a great day that was about to get even better.

Our guide also pointed out a bird and its fishing technique, it basically formed an umbrella with its wings and because it has brightly coloured feet the fish were attracted to them. The birds wings (umbrella) was then used to shade their feet so they can see the fish. The bird would walk along, setup the umbrella, then move along again, very clever.

We headed inland from the mighty Zambizi river after watching the elephants, hippos fish eagles, baboons, buffalos impalas etc and this is where it got really exciting. firstly we stopped to watch a elephant chase a baboon around and then we saw it up close and personal - a leopard. Martina and I were looking at this massive bull elephant to the left side of the vehicle when the guide casually said there is a leopard under the tree on the right side, he was literally about 3 meters away just sitting there. Now I have been accused of being the paparazzi on this tour and let me say the camera trigger finger went into melt down. Prior to seeing the leopard we were saying for the $45 US why wouldn't you go on the game drive and given what we had seen prior to the leopard we were all really happy and thinking we had got our monies worth, but seeing a leopard that close was over the top!!!

A couple of times we got over excited and stood up and the leopard got a bit cranky and started to snarl, and lets just say when that happens you get chills. I could rabbit on for hours but I won't, if you want to experience what its like to be that close to a wild leopard you need to go on game drives.

We then headed for the late afternoon cruise, as we arrived and were disembarking the truck Martina slipped and hurt her ankle, it was a slight interruption to her day but I reminded her to think about how good the game drive was and the pain would all be worth it.

The Brisvegas six filled the esky with alcohol so I should tell it was going to be a messy trip for some. On the cruise there were also some people from the northern part of NSW and the other Australians that had been doing the accommodated tour, we said hello and discussed how good the afternoon game drive was whilst we cruised along.

The funniest thing happened whilst we were on board the late afternoon / sunset cruise, Ivy and her husband said how they had only been on the boat for about half an hour and there were two people driving them insane... guess which two. Well it was Danny and Needie, (they just wouldn't shut up and were as usual, incredibly loud), my response was you want to try spending three weeks on a truck with them...

The game viewing was also fantastic, the boat headed in the general direction of where we were during the afternoon game drive, so we were guaranteed to see some animals. Lots of hippos, elephants a couple of water bucks, fish eagles and even a crocodile just for good measure.

So Tip of the day, if you want to go to Africa to see wildlife you might want to do some game drives, you're highly unlikely to see the good stuff getting blind at the bar.