As promised, we are back with a post on our trip to Botswana that was part of our African excursion a few weeks ago. I hope you enjoyed what we had to say about Zambia last week and that we’re not overloading you with too much travel.
We spent one day in Botswana, and it was a great day. We took a one day safari in the Chobe National Park. Mr. Right and I spent a few days at the Chobe Safari Lodge to celebrate our anniversary a few years ago. The lodge is just great, and it’s where Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor spent their second honeymoon. We were excited to return this time with Jordan and some friends.
It was an early morning for us. We were picked up at our hotel in Livingstone, Zambia and were driven about 60 miles on the main highway in an open air safari vehicle that didn’t have seatbelts. Let’s just say this would not have been allowed to happen in the good ole USA. Sometimes on our third world trips, I wish there would be an OSHA safety inspector along just to check things out. This photo shows the same type of truck, but at this point we were in the park.
Anyway, we then had a border crossing and hopped into a small little boat to cross the river into Botswana. There we were picked up by another safari jeep and driven to our starting point.
The first leg of our safari was on a pontoon on the river between Zambia and Botswana. We saw all kinds of great animals. There were hippos.
Alligators. Can you see it hiding there in the grass with its open mouth?
Elephants and more elephants. They drink, bathe, play in the water, and then throw dirt on themselves to have protection from the sun. It is quite the spa day.
Then we had lunch and afterwards headed out to the driving portion of the safari. There were so, so many elephants which thrilled us because the population has increased significantly since Mr. Right and I were there before. Poaching is still a problem, and the selling of ivory, even though it is illegal, is still being done. However, they have stepped up their efforts to capture and prosecute the poachers, and it is working.
We probably saw hundreds of elephants that day. They are such family units, and the babies are kept in between the big elephants as protection. They weren’t afraid of us and got very close to our jeep. This one has already been to the river and that brown that you see on it is the dust/mud that protects its skin.
Now, my personal favorite wild animal is the giraffe. We saw several and learned that if there is fur on the horns, then it’s a female.
Seeing a giraffe drink and eat is almost comical. It looks like a tripod with four legs. In one motion it lowers its front legs to drink, and in one motion, it rises up again. Bless their hearts!
There were wart hogs that are so ugly they are cute. They always remind me of “The Lion King.”
And there were spring boks.
We didn’t see zebras, but we saw some on a game drive we did earlier in the trip and on one in Namibia. We also didn’t see any lions this time but have seen them and water buffaloes in the past.
I have been on several safaris in several different African countries, and by far, Botswana is my favorite with a close second being the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania.
