Africa Safari in Botswana at Chobe Game Lodge
Africa Safari in Botswana. Sometimes you get one of those chances to experience something in life that you may never get again. For me, one of these experiences was visiting Chobe Game Lodge in Chobe National Park in Botswana. I have been to several great spots in Africa, but I would have to say that this one was my favorite.
We started in a small six person boat, which felt like a row boat. This was really very cool, until we saw our first hippo and croc from a little to close in the comfort zone. Hippos are actually the most dangerous animals in Africa that you can see on safari, and are responsible for more fatalities than even lions. If you get close – they get mean. Fortunately we were able to steer clear from their proximity, but we got great photos of both hippos and crocs first hand. From the boat we also were able to witness an elephant coming down for water and actually crossing the river, which is in the picture below. We watched this elephant for what seemed like 5 minutes, but turned out to be closer to an hour. We got a little too close and he became a bit agitated with us (ears flapping and feet stomping like a four year old), but fortunately we were safe and dry in our small aluminum sardine can of a rowboat.
After the elephant we adventured onward to some deep marshy waters, where we just nervously waited for that inevitable ‘THUMP’ bumping into a 12 foot croc which we couldn’t see through the marsh. We did see plenty of crocs (some from a few feet away), but a highlight was that we came around a corner and came across a huge monitor lizard. These look cool in the zoo, but downright scary in nature, but again fortunately we were safely in our thin aluminum dingy, that we named the ‘minnow’. It was actually more like a guppy.
After about four hours doing the safari by boat, we headed back to the Chobe Lodge for a meal equivalent to anything I have had in Italy or France. What a day, but that was only half of it, as after lunch we were heading out in the land rovers for the land safari. Stay tuned!
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