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).

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!