Chobe National Park, Botswana

We went from Zambia to Botswana today.

This was the first (and likely only) morning we have gotten to sleep in this trip. Sleeping in was 8 am. We had a leisurely breakfast, finished packing, and got picked up for the drive to Botswana. The distance to our next lodge wasn’t terribly far, but the process involved 3 different people/vehicles to transport us to and over the border. Botswana is one of those countries that requires COVID PCR testing within 72 hours prior to crossing the border, but then repeats the testing when you arrive at the border. Needless to say, between that, passport control, customs, getting out of the vehicle again to step in some sanitizer for our shoes, and the fact that Zambia made us leave the vehicle, use hand sanitizer, and get sprayed down with an unknown chemical before we even got to the Botswana part of the border, the whole process of crossing the actual border took well over an hour.

We did eventually make it there, get settled, and get going. We are staying in Chobe Game Lodge, which is in the Chobe National Park on the Chobe River. This area is known for elephants, and we saw multiple on our drive in to the lodge.

Our afternoon safari was a river cruise. We were not disappointed!

Early on we saw a pied kingfisher who posed nicely on the shoreline.

We quickly came upon a very large group of elephants in a cove. We spent quite a while watching them. There were some pretty young ones plus some juveniles who were play fighting in the water.

Little egret

We were very content with the large group of elephants we had seen, only to be outdone by a huge group further down river. We truly lost count! This picture only represents a small portion of that herd.

Hippo

giraffe are not made for eating off the ground

On our return back up the river we encountered a herd that decided to cross the river in front of us. Now, it turns out that elephants are quite capable swimmers while hippos walk on the bottom of bodies of water and do not swim at all. That said, it is quite ridiculous to watch a bunch of elephants swimming.