Ihaha, Chobe National Park

We spent 6 nights at what was our favorite camp the last time we visited Botswana. It’s still a beautiful setting on the river, but because poachers had been coming to rob tourists (in addition to killing animals), the Botswana Defense Force had to step in and so now patrols through the night are normal. These disrupt the feeling of being in the wild. The other big change is simply how many people are now here. On our drive into the park, we saw at least a dozen safari vehicles along our river drive --- very different from the past trip where we maybe saw a few in a day. All that said, Chobe is still incredibly beautiful and teeming with wildlife. We saw lions on our first and second days (cubs at last!) and from our campsite, we were able to see a pair of honey badgers, springhares, a male lion, a hyena, and elephant (all in the dark) and wilddogs running by one morning (Christy’s favorite wake up call is now “Christy! Wilddogs!!!) We also had an amazing experience watching a martial eagle (Africa’s largest eagle – majestic as you can imagine) trying to hunt a mongoose. It was sitting on a dead tree branch watching a group of mongoose below and eventually tried to grab one of them. It missed and retreated to a branch. The amazing thing was, the entire clan of mongooses (mongeese?) charged up the tree and chased it away to nearby bush. There was then a bit of a standoff before the eagle, trying to retain some dignity, swooped down again to try to scare the badass mongooses before flying quickly away. AMAZING!Read more