May 27 - Chobe Game Drive

Today’s destination was Chobe National Park in Botswana. We had a 7:30 a.m. departure. Sandy and I were the first people in the breakfast room.

Our driver arrived, and very fortuitously, mentioned to us that, since we would be leaving Zimbabwe for Botswana, and coming back into Zimbabwe, that we would need another entry visa, meaning that we would each have to pony up another $75 US. I was the only one with enough cash left, so the other three opted to stay back while I ventured out on my own. I must say, I was taking a leap of faith in doing so!

The drive to the border took about an hour. The border crossing was a sad Pepto-Bismal pink building bordered with rusty abandoned vehicles, with a tangle of mini-vans dropping off tourists and safari vehicles picking up tourists and the occasional semi-truck trying to get through the maze. No lane markings, nobody controlling traffic flow. Just chaos. Oh yes, and wart hogs wandering around.

I rendezvoused with the driver/tracker for the day, Tiki. Five other people loaded into the safari vehicle, and we set off to enter Botswana. We had to get out and dip our shoes in disinfectant (vehicles had to drive through a puddle of disinfectant),

We got through exiting Zimbabwe, and got our passports stamped to enter Botswana. Off to Chobe National Park – about a 20-minute drive. Chobe is Botswana’s first national park and its most biologically diverse park.

We set off in search of four of Africa’s Big Five – this park does not have rhinos. My fellow searchers had not yet been on a game drive, so they were eager to see anything of interest.

The park has millions of impalas. They have distinctive markings on their behinds that look like the McDonald’s Arches, so we quickly became adept at identifying them.

Then we saw kudu, the largest of the antelope family, with the distinctive white stripes on their bodies.

Then we saw giraffes. They move from tree to tree eating the foliage. The trees secrete a tannin that makes the leaves bitter to discourage the giraffes from feeding any more, so they move on to the next tree. A tree will become palatable again in a few weeks.

Then we saw a herd of elephants drinking at the river while a pair of young impala did some play fighting – good practice for when they will have to defend their young when they are older.

Next, we spied hippos up on their legs. They spend a lot of time in the water to protect their skin against the sun, so this was a good sighting.

Then we saw buffalo, so we were two out of five on the Big Five. And then, we spied a pride of lions sunning themselves in the shade of far-off trees. All of a sudden, the lions got up and went on the move. The alpha male lion followed behind. Something was up.

We stopped for our morning water break, and as we finished, Tiki got word that the lions had killed one of the buffalo. We hopped back in the vehicle, and Tiki sped over the rough roads as we hung on. He had to go off the beaten road which Tiki said he was not supposed to do, but this was a very special reason to bend the rules. About 125 meters off the road, there was the entire pride (someone had counted 17 lions) gnawing on the carcass of a buffalo. What an incredible sight!

We saw elephants - the baby elephant was delightful to watch.

So, a count of three of of five, and a lion kill. Pretty amazing for a morning game drive. We were incredibly lucky because our river cruise was supposed to have been in the morning and our game drive in the afternoon. We would never have seen the lion kill if the original schedule had held up.Read more