Day two of my two day adventure took me to Chobe national park in Botswana. I rode to the river crossing with a young doctor from Colorado named Joanna. She was in Zambia for a month doing a residency exchange program at a hospital in North West Zambia that I completely forgot the name of. It started with the letter S and was complicated. Her boyfriend was doing the same thing in Uganda and they were competing to see who would have the best Safaro pictures from the last day of their stay. I am pretty sure she won because we saw some amazing stuff.
We drove to a river and took a 2 min boat ride across that river to Botswana and did the whole immigration thing. Then we drove about 17 mins to a game lodge that was on the Chobe river. It was much more swanky than I expected it to be. Well, I didn't know what to expect, and it was very nice. We saw a little money steal a packet of sugar and run up a tree. I knew that it was going to be a good day from that alone.
The first adventure of the day was a river cruise. The Chobe river runs along the border of Botswana and Namibia and there is an island that has an interesting history of conflict that I'm not really going to get into much. Long story short, Namibia wanted to farm it and Botswana wanted to preserve it for it's tourist value. Botswana won . . . eventually. Apparently for years each country put up it's flag and the other would tear it down. So now it's a muddy marsh in the rainy season and dry in the dry season (who would have thought) and animals swim to it, through crocodile infested waters, to feast on it's lush grasses. The grasses were lush indeed. In fact, if I were to eat any wild grass, that would be the grass to eat.
As we sped along the river we saw Impala, Puku and Udu. They are nice, and plentiful. Impala are called the fast food of the wild because they have hind markings that look like an M (McDonald's) and they are eaten often by Crocs and big cats. They are plentiful like chicken nuggets so we don't have to worry about them going extinct or anything like that. After we passed our first group of Impalas and other antelope we saw a 8ft long crocodile. Then some Impalas came to the water to drink where the croc was hiding. Now don't judge me, but I was 100% thinking "come on crocodile" and was recording video hoping for a scene right out of NatGeo Wild. Unfortunately, no such thing happened and we moved on.
We saw some Fish Eagles (the national bird of Zambia), which look like bald eagles, and hunt fish. We also saw their nest. This one was a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom duplex with roof access. It was massive. We saw more birds and then saw some hippos in the water. They were pretty boring and looked like rocks that blow mist in the air.
Then came the big guys. We saw a boat near the shore in the distance and rushed over. They had seen an elephant in the bushes but I guess they got impatient and took off as soon as we arrived. Too bad for them because the elephant put on quite a show. It ate and did all sorts of elephant stuff. The coolest part is that we got to watch it walk into the water and swim to the island and reemerge to feed on that list grass that I imagine tastes like cotton candy. They do a sort of breast stroke and bob up and down and use their trunks as a snorkel. It was amazing to watch. After the first elephans we saw a second one that was like 25 ft from us. It too did elephant things. One never gets tired of seeing elephants do elephant things for some reason.
We travelled some more and saw a croc sunbathing with it's mouth open and another elephant doing elephant stuff and then some more hippo rocks. As we left the last elephant we saw a small orange thing above the tree tops in the distance.
GIRAFFES!! What the heck. I think someone paid these animals to come out. The giraffes were fun. They splay their legs out to drink and look really awkward. This one had a skin disease caused by tics and was a lil lumpy but was still cool. They kept suddenly bucking up and down to get rid of the birds that pick the ticks off off them because they were getting irritated. A warhog walked by and tried to get in the spotlight as well. It was a pretty rich scene. After the tall guys, we went somewhere else and saw some baby hippos and went to a patch of Lily pads. These were really nice. The guide pulled one out of the water and showed us the bulb at the bottom that locals peel and chop into sauces and eat. He then made a necklace from the stem and flower and passed it around. After that we meandered around for a bit until it was time to go to the lodge for lunch.
The buffet was pretty decent. I got to try warthog meat. It was pretty much like tender beef. Didn't taste warthoggy at all. I also had several desserts and lots of iced tea and lemonade. I hadn't had much refined sugar during the trip so I kind of went bonkers.
The afternoon was Safari time. We took a short ride to Chobe National Park in a safari vehicle and went on our adventure. It started off with more fast food Impalas and some Kudu. We passed some nice views of the river that we were just on and then out came the big guys. We passed a herd of elephants feasting on plants. This huge female was basically breaking tree branches with her as if she were picking dandelions. The little ones were shoving leaves into their little triangular mouthes and some of the others were stripping leave off of the stems and eating the stems . We passed tabg group and hit another group that was on both sides of us. One meduim sized elephant crossed the road within about 5 feet of the vehicle and then stopped in front of us. The guide told us that they have pretty poor eyesight and see the vehicles as one unit. They are used the sound of them and as long as we don't try to make ourselves known they will continue to do elephant things as if we were not there.
Further down the road we saw more elephants and then some giraffes in the distance. After several more Impala we came upon a group of baboons. Now I had just seen them close up the day before at the Falls so I wasn't really impressed. Then we saw one baboon, um, answer the call of nature with another and moved on. For the next 30 mins we saw what seemed like billions of elephants, but never got tired of those grey guys.
We had a quick rest stop after we saw some lion tracks from the night before in the sand. We got out of the vehicle at a designated stretch point and took a break from all of the sitting and bouncing. The guide laughingly told us to watch out for lions. I'm pretty sure he was serious, but he said it in such a fleeting manner so as not to worry us for real. Joanne asked if she could go squat by a tree and I was relieved that the guide said yes because I had to pee as well. I marked my territory and rejoined the group for the last leg of the tour.
As we went along the edge of the water another truck passed us and the guides spoke briefly and we sped to a point a turned into the bush. There it was. A lioness less than 15 feet away from us trying to take a nap. It glanced over at us and then closed it's eyes. The guy sitting in front of me, who was silent up until this point, loudly exclaimed "well that lion is just laying there!" Now we had been warned at the start of the trip to keep our voices low and had been pretty good. I don't know what in the world compelled him, at this very moment, when a lion is 15 feet away, to be loud. Naturally the lion lifed her head, opened her eyes and shot him a glance of death. We shushed him and enjoyed seeing the lion. A male lion apparently passed by in the bushes about 35 feet away but then quietly vanished. Someone thought that it would be a good idea to change seats and since lions have sight that is sensitive to movement, it became very alert. Our guide, seeing the lion look annoyed, decided that it was time to go and we sped away. We saw a dung beetle in the road pushing a ball of . . . dung, with it's back legs moving backward like dung beetles do. Basically animals do all of the animal stuff that you see them do on tv. It was still amazing to see them do it up close and personal.
We went back to the lodge and then back to the border. So the park is in Botswana, as I mentioned, and we had to show our passports to cross the border. I told the immigration officer at the Airport that when I came I would be going to the game reserve and I needed a double entry visa. Well, come to find out the visa he gave me was single entry. So when I got to the border to come back into Zambia, they said I had to pay 200 Kwacha because I didn't pay the right fee at the airport. How am I supposed to know what to check for after I told the guy what I needed. Well, it just so happened that Dr. Thomas told me to only bring my passport and no cash because there are pick pockets sometimes at the pier. So I only bought 50 Kwacha in my pocket secretly. When I was told about the issue, got, as he would call, "American mad" and the lady behind the counter really didn't care for it and told me that if I didn't pay I would have to stay in Botswana. Luckily our guide had the 200 Kwacha I needed to get back into Zambia or this would have potentially been a much different post. I was about to get really irritated and refuse to pay when I remembered that the guards have AK-47 assault rifles, and I'm in Africa, so I'm glad the guide had cash. Afterwards Dr. Thomas told me if I was really nice and was willing to sit there and just wait and look sad for a few mins they would have let me in. Now I know.
Now that I'm spoiled by live game, the zoo seems like watching the Wizard of Oz on a small 13 inch black and white tv. I need to take my girls on Safari they would never forget the experience and will only want to have bigger and better adventures. Thank you again to Mr and Mrs Dr. Thomas for giving me this incredible gift at the end of an incredible trip!!
👏👏👏
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