Africa

The end of my canceled Namibia to Falls safari was in Chobe Park, famous for the wildlife along the river, including hippos, crocs and Africa's largest population of elephants. My stay in Livingstone was to include a hike in the rhino preserve, but I can't do that, so I booked an all day trip to Chobe.

Pickup at 7 and joined two young Germans who were doing a year volunteering as teachers in northern Namibia and now is their 2 week holiday.

Drive about an hour on the highway to the four country meeting point of Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia with multiple border crossings between each and then the crossing to Botswana on the new bridge after the various immigration formalities and a disinfection of our shoes against hoof and mouth.

At 9am got to the meeting point at a very posh Lodge, where my bad luck reappeared. After waiting a long while, it turned out a large group who were to cruise with us were stuck in long queues at the border, so finally at 10:30, we were off on a smaller boat. It is 20 minutes up the river to where the National Park actually begins, but after 10 minutes, our motor conks out, the driver managed to get going at a slower speed, but at our first wildlife sighting -- two hippos in the distance, our motor once again died as we tried to push through thick weeds to get closer. After an hour and an attempted rescue by another boat, we finally got going, but now had little time to get into the best places. Sigh. I am not known for being a boat lover, and the whole point of this was to get to areas of high animal concentration inaccessible by land.

However, today we saw Cape buffalo, hippos, a couple of elephants, crocs, and lots of birds. And it was an interesting and scenic ecosystem., which in most contexts of lower expectations, would have been a great outing.

We returned to the lodge at 1pmEn savoir plus