African safari in Botswana (part II)

African Safari in Chobe Game Park, Botswana (cont.) - After lunch at the Chobe Lodge (which I already wrote about how awesome the food and atmosphere was) we headed out by land rover to see what we could find with our driver and tracker. We were of course in search of the Big 5, but sadly learned that there were no rhino in Chobe. There are basically two types of African rhino, black (which are very rare) and white (which are more common). The problem with the rhino is that Chobe borders Namibia on the other side of the river that I mentioned earlier, and there have been problems with poachers coming from the Namibian side stemming from their belief in medicinal purposes in the horns of the rhino. This is very disheartening and saddening to lean of the constant struggle with the game reserves in keeping poachers away. I am not sure if you read my article on eco travel, but without tourism dollars coming into many of these game reserves, the animals have no chance of survival.

So without the hope of finding rhino, we are off in search of the rest of the Big Five (lion, leopard, elephant and water buffalo). We drove for about two hours seeing only one elephant sighting, when we discovered in the distance a full grown male lion laying in the grass. What a tremendous site! I have been on several safaris in my life, but this is the first time I have been this close to a full male lion. It was awesome, but a little scary! We got some great pictures of the lion when we saw in the distance the rest of the pride. The male was lazy and laying in the grass, but in the distance we saw the lioness with about four or five cubs playing around her. We got as close as we could and watched them for about an hour. We inched closer and closer, but the mom started getting a bit nervous with our presence. She came over between the land rover and the cubs and sat at attention, so she could move quickly if needed. Obviously this was all we needed to decide to continue our adventure in another direction.

We eventually ran into more elephant, which was great. Chobe has the largest elephant population in Afrcia, which is now estimated to be at around 120,000. They are mirgatory, and travel up to 200 kilometers per year. I didn’t put any more elephant pictures here, but you can see a great photo on Botswana (part I) blog.

It was a great day in Chobe, and after several hours in the land rover, we had to make our way back to where we were staying in Zimbabwe (but that is a story for another day).