Day 4, Tuesday. Onward to Botswana.
Today we leave the Stanley and Livingstone (kicking and screaming!).
Andrew
The trip will take about an hour by motor coach. But first, Andrew drives us to a local school to meet with teachers and students. The students, all young girls, treated us and another tour group to a performance of traditional music and dance. Then they each tell us what they want to be when they grow up, and each of in turn tells them what we do in our own country. The visit was sort of a planned touristy-thing but we didn't mind, it was interesting and good to see that education is important to the local people.
We leave the school and travel west to Botswana. At the border, we leave Andrew's motorcoach and check our passports at the Zimbabwe border office. We walk across the border (I was not allowed to take photos). We are required to step through a section that is wet with a solution to prevent the transfer of hoof-and-mouth disease from one country to the next, then our passports are checked at the Botswana border office.
We climb into a motor coach and meet our new local Guide, Sefi. We will stay in the Mowana Safari Lodge. On the map below, note the location of Chobe National Park, in the upper right hand corner of Botswana. Our safari lodge is just outside that national park, on the Chobe River, which forms the border of Botswana and Namibia to the north.
image credit
We settle into our rooms and enjoy an extravagent buffet lunch. Here is a sign in our room:
That's all the rest for the travelers, though! Time to get back into a safari jeep!
Sefi drives us the five or so miles to Chobe National Park. Just inside, he stops by the side of the road and points out an elephant trail and fresh tracks. We start to get excited again, because we haven't yet seen totally wild elephants!
We follow the jeep trail:
And suddenly, right in front of us, is a giraffe!
Giraffes are amazing to watch, so graceful, so elegant. We saw a redbilled hornbill:
A blackbellied or capeglossy starling:
A kudu:
A blue waxbill:
Cape buffalo:
We saw all of these animals within 20 minutes of entering Chobe National Park! This area is simply teeming with wildlife, more so than the area around Victoria Falls. I'll share more animal photos from this same day in the next blog entry.
Navigation: first safari blog entry
Next blog entry
Andrew
The trip will take about an hour by motor coach. But first, Andrew drives us to a local school to meet with teachers and students. The students, all young girls, treated us and another tour group to a performance of traditional music and dance. Then they each tell us what they want to be when they grow up, and each of in turn tells them what we do in our own country. The visit was sort of a planned touristy-thing but we didn't mind, it was interesting and good to see that education is important to the local people.
We leave the school and travel west to Botswana. At the border, we leave Andrew's motorcoach and check our passports at the Zimbabwe border office. We walk across the border (I was not allowed to take photos). We are required to step through a section that is wet with a solution to prevent the transfer of hoof-and-mouth disease from one country to the next, then our passports are checked at the Botswana border office.
We climb into a motor coach and meet our new local Guide, Sefi. We will stay in the Mowana Safari Lodge. On the map below, note the location of Chobe National Park, in the upper right hand corner of Botswana. Our safari lodge is just outside that national park, on the Chobe River, which forms the border of Botswana and Namibia to the north.
image credit
We settle into our rooms and enjoy an extravagent buffet lunch. Here is a sign in our room:
That's all the rest for the travelers, though! Time to get back into a safari jeep!
Sefi drives us the five or so miles to Chobe National Park. Just inside, he stops by the side of the road and points out an elephant trail and fresh tracks. We start to get excited again, because we haven't yet seen totally wild elephants!
We follow the jeep trail:
And suddenly, right in front of us, is a giraffe!
Giraffes are amazing to watch, so graceful, so elegant. We saw a redbilled hornbill:
A blackbellied or capeglossy starling:
A kudu:
A blue waxbill:
Cape buffalo:
We saw all of these animals within 20 minutes of entering Chobe National Park! This area is simply teeming with wildlife, more so than the area around Victoria Falls. I'll share more animal photos from this same day in the next blog entry.
Navigation: first safari blog entry
Next blog entry
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