Day 18 - 19 - Chobe National Park, Botswana

Chobe Safari Lodge

LEON:  Chobe national park is on the Chobe River, that later turns into the Zambezi River,  depending on the country that you are in.  The Zambezi is one of Africa’s great rivers, running many miles to the Indian Ocean.  It is divided into the upper, middle, and lower river. The middle Zambezi is an amazing place with incredible numbers of the different types of wild animals that Africa is famous for.  The compound where we are staying is nice.  The pool is wonderful.  And the view on the river is a delight.  There are warthogs all over the grounds.  Innumerable signs tell us to be afraid (be very afraid ) of the crocodiles that live and hunt on the shore of the river.  Chobe Safari Lodge is the name of our compound.  Although most things here are really nice, we of the nomadic overland tribe are pitching our tents on the gritty and ever-present sand. 

The sign on the camp's path speaks for itself... and be very afraid.

This is a place where people come to take incredible pictures of birds and animals.  It is a birder's paradise with all of the different varieties here, and our resident birder, Leo has been scoring big time.  There are boat rides available with fixed camera mounts, full frame cameras, and HUGE lenses that are as expensive as small cars.  That boat ride is available for a "nominal fee".  Only those in the terminal stages of the Shutterbug virus are willing to pay the price, but those with that malady feel the compulsion to do so.  What an incredible opportunity to use lenses that are the same as National Geographic photogs might use.

A photographer's dream lens and boat.

In the morning, we went out on a land tour.  On that ride is a great encounter with a large pride of lions.  In the afternoon, there is a boat cruise, where Barb will see incredible numbers of African animals traveling in herds. 

But we are traveling for fun.  And we are behind in our blog.  Rather than tell the story in words with only a few pics to help understand what we are seeing, Barb will be telling the story of Chobe with her pictures of the animals.  Here goes.......

Chobe River - The passage crossings are made by the hippos.

BARB:  It’s hard to compare Chobe with Etosha’s game park that we visited earlier.  Chobe is a water wonderland where Etosha is a desert paradise.  They are somewhat the same as we saw lots of fantastic game animals, and birds, in both.  However, we didn’t see the masses in Etosha as we had today in Chobe.  We saw many herds of elephants and encountered our first Cape Buffalo - hundreds of Cape Buffalo.

It was a nice way for our safari trip to start to wind down - on an animal high.

Non-shutterbugs may have gotten ‘animaled out’ but not me. 

I’m just going to share photos as they speak louder than any words can. 

Among many many other animals, on our morning game drive, we saw giraffe, kudu, elephants, lots of baboons, a pride of lions, and a wide variety of birds.

Kudu with impressive horns.

The baboons were so fun to watch.

Baboons doing what they do well, pick bugs off of each other.

Hanging out watching the lion sitting next to them.

We were watching the baboons and saw this female panting heavily and drooling.  After a closer look, we saw that she had blood in her drool and her belly was big.  The reason that she was panting is because she recently made a kill and ate her prey.

Lioness just ate something for dinner.

When we looked across the road from the lioness, we saw a pride of other lionesses and this lion came running through the bush then right across the road in front of us.  It was quite an exciting and impressive sight.

A lion protecting his pride.

It might be time for us to leave...

There were so many varieties of birds.  Here are a couple of the more colorful ones.

Saddle-billed stork

White-fronted Bee-eater

The afternoon boat ride started when we came upon a large herd of elephants by the river's edge.  We saw the smallest baby elephant that we have come across in all of our travels. 

Shows how small compared to mommy and junior.

Big daddy

Up to this point, we hadn't seen any Cape Buffalo close enough to get any photos.  We finally got our opportunity. 

Just a few of the Cape Buffalo grazing away.

An impressive Cape Buffalo

We were excited to see the hippos walking around.  Previously,  all of the sightings were of them in the water, and then, we were lucky to see more than their eyes and ears above water.

Hippos get along well with Cape Buffalo.

There were so many elephants!!!

A herd of elephants on the horizon at dusk.

There were a few crocodiles too.  It was a good thing that we were observing from the boat and not along the path at our lodge.

A crocodile hanging out by the river.

Crocs have lots of teeth.

It's time to move along...

We had an amazing day and it's one that we won't soon forget.