After leaving Maun we took off for Nata, where we spent a night on our way to Chobe National Park. Nata was pretty uneventful. We checked into our hotel in the afternoon, then hung out by the pool until it was time for dinner. It was a little cold, so I didn’t stay in the pool for long. One exciting thing about our room was that it had an outdoor shower! That was fun. The next morning we left for Chobe!
We stayed at a lodge just outside of the park, right on the Chobe River. You could look across the river to see Namibia, which was exciting because at this point I hadn’t been in Namibia for several days, and was starting to miss it a little bit. One of the first things we noticed when we walked into the lodge was the vervet monkeys running around and playing on the railings and in the trees in the courtyard of the hotel. A good reminder to always shut the windows so monkeys don’t get into the room and wreak havoc!
After a buffet lunch (we sure had a lot of buffet meals, I ended up eating way more than I needed to over spring break) and a short time by the pool, it was time for our boat ride on the Chobe River! We got on a boat with 10 other tourists, prepared for our three hour boat ride in Chobe National Park. Our first stop was at an office to declare that we were entering the national park, and we saw our first elephant and hippo of the day! The elephant was walking by the office, and as we were pulling away the hippo surfaced right next to the boat. It was an exciting start to the boat ride.
We probably saw hundreds of elephants during the boat ride. Families running down to the water together, baby elephants wallowing in the mud, elephants eating by themselves, elephants eating with other elephants. Pretty much, we just saw lots of elephants. One thing I saw that I thought was really cool was how you would see families of elephants traveling together, with many different generations living together. If I hadn’t been an elephant fan before, these sightings would have been enough to do it now!
We also saw families of hippos in the water. These weren’t quite as exciting for me, because it was hard to see more than eyes or ears for the most part. But we did see some hippos partially out of water, and there were large groups of hippos, so that was fun.
Another part of the boat cruise was getting to see the sunset. We stopped over near the Namibian shore for a while, and observed the effects of the rising floods. There are houses and cabins that are partially covered in water already, even though the peak of the flood in this area won’t occur for another couple of months. But sunset was absolutely beautiful. We watched most of it from the boat and, as usual, the sky was incredible (what is it about the African sky that is so indescribable?). The water was really peaceful during this whole time, so it was a great experience. We arrived back at the lodge to some traditional singing and dancing, and watched the rest of the sunset over the river. The colors were magnificent! So many purples, pinks, blues. I loved looking out over the river, watching the rainstorm miles away and being glad it wasn’t over us, admiring the beauty.
In the morning we went for yet another game drive, this time through Chobe National Park. Although you can see much more wildlife in the morning, the morning game drives always leave around 6, which is a little too early to be up on a vacation. Not two minutes away from the hotel we saw our first elephants for the day, feeding along the side of the road. Once we entered the park we started seeing herds of impalas, because apparently you can’t go to a national park in southern Africa without seeing hundreds of impalas. But I love looking at impalas, they don’t get old.
A troop of hundreds of baboons walked past our jeep. There were so many it took over 30 minutes for them to all pass us. We saw baboons with babies, baboons grooming each other, old baboons, young baboons, baboons in trees, baboons in the road, pretty much baboons doing everything. Our guide had told us that in the morning, it’s not likely to see many animals, but it’s the time of the day you are most likely to see any of the cats. During the entire drive, we had our eyes peeled, looking for lions or leopards or cheetahs. We finally saw some lions though! Our guide drove off the road to get closer to them. We got pretty close (not close enough for my little camera to get good photos, though), and go to watch a few lionesses walking through the bush. As we were speeding back towards the road, one guy lost his hat because we were driving so fast. We had to go back and get it, but the guide was in a hurry the entire time. When we got back to the road, he explained that we were not supposed to leave the roads, but he wanted us to be able to see the lions. We were all very appreciative that he thought of us. After the lion sighting, the rest of the game drive didn’t seem as exciting. Afterwards we got back to the hotel, checked out, and headed towards Zimbabwe and Victoria Falls!
No comments:
Post a Comment