Chobe National Game Park, Botswana

While the previous two parks were excellent, I have now been to a park that made me feel like I was in a time warp into the 1800's when the European explorers were crossing the continent of Africa and writing back fantasy tales of large game and enormous herds of animals being around every bend. This park for me was the Chobe National Game Park in Botswana along the Chobe River where four countries meet (Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia, and Namibia).

We entered the park by embarking on a small metal boat headed up-stream. The river was fairly narrow near the town, but it widened to about ½ mile as came into the area of the park. Fortunately, it was an extremely hot day because the animals are much like us in the summer time and like to go for a swim or hang out by the water's edge where it is a bit cooler. As we passed by the dense forests, we saw families of velvet monkeys, fish eagles (similar to the bald eagle) every couple hundred yards, hippopotamus families of twelve or more both in and out of the water, a lioness lying in the shade under a tree, and crocodiles devouring a dead elephant in the water. However, the highlight of the boat ride was seeing the elephants.

I first sighted a couple elephants playing in the water further up-stream when we were trying to get a better view of the lioness, so we took the boat up to see them. As we were watching the two young elephants play, more and more kept coming out of the forest. At the peak, there were twenty-five elephants visible along the beach and in the water. We were only about forty feet from the ones that were in the water, and they ranged from an elephant that was only a couple months old to an enormous and really old male elephant that looked as if it stood more than twenty feet tall and had tusks four or five feet long. We stayed there for about ½ hour just watching them, and no one wanted to leave because some would be stomping and digging holes in the mud and then spraying it all over themselves and the others, while the young males would be fighting by wrapping their trunks around each other and engaging in a sort of tug of war, and finally the little ones would be clumsily following their mother while trying to push the others in the water or rolling around in the mud; but we had to continue to meet our game drive truck.

A modified, open-air Land Rover met us at the bank and took us on a game drive for the afternoon. I did not think that the boat ride could be beaten, but we drove through a Jurassic Park-like fantasy world of herds of animals walking all around us within "petting" distance including impalas, springboks, giraffes, and even water buffalo (one of the big five and considered the most dangerous). We also had families of warthogs running in front of and along side our Rover. However, the brief highlight of the game drive came at the very end, when we had a leopard dart in front of our vehicle on our way back to camp. It was just a brief instance, but I consider it the highlight because most people including the guides never see a leopard. We then made our way back to camp exhausted from a wonderful day, but we still had one more drive the next morning before leaving the park.

We set off at 6 am to hopefully see a big cat and drove for a couple hours without seeing anything of merit, but our guide was following the lion tracks along the road. Then we saw a group of vulchers circling above the trees, and we knew that there was something dead there but didn't know what it was. So, we headed towards the water where we thought the kill was and started driving through the water at the river's edge until we saw what looked to be a large stone in the water, but it was moving. As we got closer, we saw that it was a lioness chewing away at the underside of a large, male elephant that it had killed during the night (this was rare because lions normally do not hunt elephants). Then we came upon her and saw the male lion lying regally in the grass just up from the water. We drove within 15 feet of the two animals, and neither one seemed concerned that we were there. We watched the two for about twenty minutes and then the male lion disappeared in the woods only to re-appear un-noticed directly behind our truck. The whole experience was completely surreal, and none of us could have imagined that we would see such a dramatic sight. But I am completely satisfied with my trip to Chobe and consider it to be by far the best part of the trip thus far.

From Chobe, I will take a short drive out of Botswana to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Victoria Falls is one of the wonders of the world and is one of the largest waterfalls in the world, but Zimbabwe is one of the poorest countries in the world and is cursed with hyper-inflation, which essentially means it is cheaper to use the Zimbabwean money for toilet paper than to actually buy the toilet paper. It will be interesting to see how these people live, and I will be sure to update you on the situation. Cheers.