28th July 2019
Chobe National Park, Botswana
Because I *love* getting out of bed early, I was up at the crack of dawn for a day trip to Chobe National Park in Botswana
Dawn over the Zambezi
I had hoped to make it an overnight trip but one of the troubles with solo travel is that minimum trip numbers often result in you being moved to different trips from your ideal- but actually on this occasion a long day trip proved to be more than adequate.
Another issue is often that the solos get picked up before the groups, and this was true in this case also, where I had no time for breakfast only a cup of tea before I was collected. We picked up a family group from (?) North Carolina (I think- they did tell me), and then we were off to the border, where we needed to transfer into a boat to get across the Kazungula river
The border here is actually a quadripoint, between Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia
There is a land border Botswana-Zimbabwe on the other side; Zambia-Zimbabwe traffic goes over the Victoria falls bridge, and Zambia-Namibia traffic is directed 150km upriver to Katima Mulilo
There is a bridge, partially financed by the Japanese, which has been under construction for about 5 year and slated for completion by 2020, but at the moment all traffic is ferried across, meaning up to a 2 day wait for trucks to cross (as an aside, when you see situations like this it's very easy to spot the epidemiological basis for a disease like HIV to spread). There were trucks backed up all over the place, including ones loaded with copper sheets (Zambia's main export) and tankers marked "acid" (I assume this is required for refining copper?). There were also lots of hawkers selling things like...copper bracelets...and I am absolutely certain that none of that copper had fallen off the back of a truck
Border is only 150m in length so they don't have a huge amount of space to play with here
One of the 2 truck pontoons, which as you can see don't exactly have a huge capacity
We needed to walk through Botswana immigration ourselves, but that was a surprisingly quick process, and then a short drive to Chobe, where we fought off monkeys from our morning smoko while the guide sorted out entry permits
The park backs onto the Chobe river, which forms part of the border between Botswana and Namibia's Caprivi strip, and the day tours basically take in the river and surrounding flood plains
We started on the flood plains, where there were many antelope species and some interesting bird life:
Impalas
Kudu
African spoonbill
Sable antelopes- apparently notoriously skittish
African fish eagle
The park also has a high elephant population, around 50,000, which was rapidly evident
Bull elephant surveying his kingdom
Mongoose nosing around near the elephants
Super cute baby elephant
Giving me the side eye
The guides all communicate by radio and we soon got word that a leopard had been sighted skulking around some giraffes and wildebeest (or possibly buffalo)
After all that excitement it was time for some lunch before heading out on the boat trip
Red lechwe
Nile crocodile eyeing up a feed
Hippo having a really bad day
Crocs taking advantage of unfortunate hippo
Goliath heron
"Ugly birds"- Marebu stork
Hippos, surely the best evidence against intelligent design
Some other kind of stork
I mean look at them
In the NP there is an island that was previously the subject of a border dispute between Namibia and Botswana (Sidudu/Kazakili island)- some elephants were attempting to cross
He is so proud of himself that he's celebrating by flicking mud around
Meanwhile the juvenile males squabble
Interestingly, part of the dispute resolution on the border issue hinged on the depth of the channel on either side of the island- so we can now say that the depth on the Botswana side is approximately 2/3 of an elephant!!
After all that excitement, it was time to head home
We took the short drive back to the border, where the acid trucks were still queuing, and where we said goodbye to the wonderful Maude and Kenny
I dined at the waterfront and managed to find a way to ease my nsima deficiency (very delicious!). As always I managed to come across as a weirdo, this time by confidently ordering pap and then
eating it with a fork (sacrilege!)
