Christmas in Chobe

Santa Clause has come to Botswana, and his first gift is an early wake-up, so that we can catch a morning game drive in Chobe National Park, one of the jewels in the African Safari crown.

We catch some good animal sightings here: early on, a hippo crosses in front of our vehicle on it’s way down into the river. We see some adorable newborn baby baboons (babyoons?); some giraffe with distinctive, darker spots, and finally, as we are leaving the park, a female lion lazing in the bush. No matter how many lions we see, there’s still the undeniable thrill of seeing one of the world’s deadliest predators up close and personal.

After the safari, we hang out at the lodge until it is time to go on a sunset boat safari on the Chobe river. We see a good number of Elephants (I refuse to call them Ellies) crossing the water, we see crocodiles basking on the water’s edge, and we accidentally slam into a hippo, which causes our large boat to lurch violently. As the captain nonchalantly leaves without checking on the health of the hippo, we hope for the best.

After a traditional African Christmas dinner of pizzas and schitnzels, our tour leader (a white South African) launches into a highly awkward drunken rant about how there is a white genocide in South Africa, that all black South Africans are lazy and that Malawians are preferred as they work hard for cheaper, and that Nelson Mandela was nothing but a terrorist. It makes us extremely uncomfortable, but what can we say? We can’t call him out on his incredibly racist views, as he’s still our tour leader for another day, and we need him to escort us back. However, given how drunk he seems, he probably didn’t remember it. We make our excuses and head to bed.Read more