Tuesday, August 13, 2019
This morning we were up before the sun and had breakfast at the hotel buffet again. Shockwave had arranged to pick us up at 7 a.m., and were on time. We were the first party to be picked up, and stopped to gather two other groups before hitting the road to Chobe National Park in Botswana.
The drive to the border took about an hour, and along the way we were quite excited to spot a couple of elephants and giraffes along the sides of the road.
The border was chaotic, as a new bridge between the countries is under construction (?? – at least I think that’s what I heard). Leaving Zimbabwe, we all filed out of the van and into the border patrol office to get our exit stamps. We had our shoes disinfected to prevent the transfer of hand, foot and mouth disease between countries.
We drove a few minutes further down the road to the Botswana border patrol, and went in there to repeat the process in order to gain our entrance stamps.
We were also asked to provide the kids’ long form birth certificates here – the third time we’d been asked to see them in as many days.
Arriving at Chobe National Park, our day was set to begin with a river safari.
Our group of 11 had a boat to ourselves, and together with our guides, we set out for a couple of hours on the water.
We plied the waters of the Chobe River and saw tons of hippos, crocodiles, and impalas.
Early in the day, our guide told us the elephants tend to come down to the riverfront around 11:30 am. We spent the whole morning without seeing an elephant, and around 11:25 am, we cruised up to the riverbank and beached the boat on the sand. Sure enough, within 3 or 4 minutes a herd of about 10 elephants appeared out of the bush and made their way down to the beach.
By this time there were several boats gathered, and the elephants were a bit apprehensive about approaching. We repositioned further away from the elephants, as did several other boats, and the elephants came down for a drink and a bath.
By this time it was noon hour, and we boated back to the jetty, and went up to the nearby Chobe Safari Lodge for lunch. It was a good buffet spread including some familiar things and some more adventurous tastes, like warthog stew and impala steak. We re-applied our sunscreen, and then headed out for our afternoon activity, a game drive around the park.
We were in a jeep with another party of 3, and were out for a couple of hours.
We started out down along the river shoreline, and by this time there were masses of elephants and hippos out grazing and splashing in the water.
We eventually turned inland, and found even more elephants in the bush.
The first elephant sightings we had were from a distance, and they seemed pretty good; but by the time we saw them in the bush, we had herds of elephants crossing the road directly in front of us, and one that came right up to the open side of the jeep.
Eventually we had to leave, and rode the jeeps all the way back to the border, where we repeated the crossing process in reverse. We drove back to Victoria Falls and dropped into a few shops in the marketplace before they closed for the night, before walking back to the hotel. We cleaned up quickly and then crossed the street back over to the Three Monkeys for dinner.
This was a fun choice – we had crocodile skewers, a trio of sliders including crocodile, beef and game burgers, and the Tropicale pizza, topped with bacon and banana.
Following all of that, full and exhausted, we made our way back to the hotel. Tomorrow, we leave for Cape Town.
Cook Family Travels 