Chobe National Park 21 – 25 October

Chobe, like Kaudum, is not fenced but you are only allowed out of your vehicle at designated areas. On the way to our first campsite, Ihaha, we saw herds of impala, lone elephants as well as parades of them, a Spotted Hyena resting in the grass, a pair of massive kudu bulls looking down at us from the top of a rock face, hippo’s wallowing in the water, crocodiles sunbathing on the banks of the river, warthogs snuffling the ground and more and more elephants. There were elephants everywhere. We couldn’t drive down one road because it was blocked by them and they weren’t moving.

Both mornings at Ihaha we woke up to buffalo grazing just downstream from our campsite. On our second day we saw a bloat of hippos snoozing on the beach just down from the road. We also saw a lion, two lionesses and two cubs lounging by the road, a troop of well over 100 baboons with lots of cute little babies (even smaller than Marlin from N/a an ku se) and a parade of 70+ elephants that got as close as 2m from us (we were in the Land Rover of course). At one point we had three of the large bulls coming straight at us. That was very freaky. That night, while eating dinner, we got to watch a hippo make its way back up stream.

We spent the next two nights at Savute (Sa-vu-te). While driving there we saw a baby leopard (our first in daylight) sitting beside the road. Its mum must have been further back in the bush with a kill as there were vultures everywhere waiting for the leftovers.

Down at Savute there were heaps of enormous bull elephants. They were a motley bunch. One had ripped ears, another had a missing tusk, and others had broken or worn down tusks. The bathrooms at the campsite had elephant proof walls built around the outside of them and the water taps at the campsites were in a concrete block. You had to put your hand trough some PVC pipe in the side to get to the tap. There were also squirrels, mongeese and birds poking around our site looking for food. I was freaked out the first night by the noise of something trying to get at our rubbish. It ended up being a honey badger.

The next day we went for a drive to see some 3000 year old Bushman art and after that we stopped at a baobab tree to stretch our legs and collect some fire wood. While we were there a pack of eight wild dogs ran past only a few meters away.