Botswana - Chobe Game Reserve

Tuesday 24^th February

 Yesterday we spent all day exploring Chobe game reserve, one of Botswana’s largest national parks. It is about 10,700 square kilometres in size and forms the northern border of the Kalahari Desert. It was originally inhabited by the Bushmen and is now home to the largest elephant population in Africa and you almost run into either a single elephant or a herd at every turn. We came across one herd right in front of us where a large male elephant was blocking us from driving on until a female with her tiny calf had safely crossed no more than five meters away.

There are very few ‘self-drives’ here and most of the organised tours go into the park early in the morning or late afternoon so when we entered at around 9am we didn’t come across a single other vehicle all day.

We stayed close to the Chobe River, which forms the Park’s northern boundary, for most of the day and apart from numerous elephant we came across a flock of vultures devouring what looked like a small elephant. The stench was unbearable!

At some point we headed inwards into a ‘valley’ where the bush was very dense and it felt like complete wilderness. Here we came across a recently killed buffalo with vultures still circling in the sky waiting their turn.

We enjoyed the day enormously but with temperatures in the late thirties I found it also exhausting.

We got back to camp feeling a bit like to guys in the picture below and I was glad it was Heather’s turn to cook supper and no, we didn’t have fish!

Last night in our camp in Botswana, leaving for Namibia tomorrow