Chobe National Park, Botswana

From Okavango, we took another 4-passenger flight to Kasane airport in the far northeast corner of Botswana. Kasane is very close to the Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe borders. We stayed in a lodge very close to Zimbabwe and did day trips into the Chobe River section of Chobe National Park.

This place kicks ass. Probably my favorite wildlife experience in Africa. There were more cats in the Serengeti (although we saw THREE leopards and followed a lioness and her 3 non-hunting cubs on a hunt of cape buffalo during out 3 days here), but the scenery here is amazing and much more varied and interesting than anything we saw in Tanzania. The Chobe River is home to many crocodiles and tons of hippos and many other waterloving creatures (monitor lizards and a ridiculous number of birds). The river creates the unique scene and we saw many different things while cruising around - African wild dogs (whcih are quite rare), hyena, and the list goes on.

The big thing is the elephants are everywhere here. The park has something like 70,000 elephants and the greater area has suppossedly 120,000. In fact, we're staying at the Elephant Valley Lodge, which has a watering hole in front of it that attracts all kinds of wildlife, but mostly elephants. My tent (nicest "tent" I've ever seen) doesn't look over the watering hole (some do), but all the common areas do and today I took the afternoon off from game drives and river cruises to just chill and enjoy the activity right in front of the lodge (pictures of me and the elephants at the lodge are below - or wherever damn blogger decides to put them).

One kind of weird thing about this place is that the lodge is very close to the Zim border and the land just over the border in Zim is owned by some high ranking gov't official who uses it for HUNTING. Yes, he takes enormous payments from people to come and hunt anything and everything - sounds like mostly buffalo and elephant though. Hunting is being phased out in Botswana (but does exist in some small areas), but Zim is a free for all - especially if you are connected to the gov't. This afternoon we watched a herd of elephants get scared off by a huntng jeep. We heard a gunshot, but saw no evidence of any successful hunting.

More hunting evidence: the elephants in the NP actually do a daily commute across the Chobe River into Namibia to graze and then they run back across the river every evening becuase they remember the days when large scale hunting in Namibia was commonplace. It still hapens I guess, but not as much - but they remember! Chobe has been a NP near the river since the 60s so its been protected here for awhile (and apparently Botswana gov't makes enough from its diamond mining that it doesn't feel the need to take payoffs from poachers like the Tanzania's gov't more or less openly does).

Chobe rules. Botswana is pricely (not really any midrange accomodation options here and lots of expensive flights), but worth it.

Tomorrow off to Victoria Falls and then Cape Town on Tuesday.

Finally some of my own pics on here.