Days 08 and 09

A quick one hour drive took us to the border of Botswana where we entered on foot, quickly went through immigration and continued on for another 1/2 hour in a jeep to our next home in Chobe.

Botswana is a beautiful and diverse country, with the Kalahari sands covering about 80% of the landmass. From a tourism perspective, their philosophy is high cost equals low impact.  As well, the government is very focused on the conservation of wildlife and as of last year, all trophy hunting was banned here completely. Their challenge now is to educate the farmers who kill the wildlife to protect their livestock….

Our home for the next two nights is the Elephant Valley Lodge, a rustic, tented lodge with a watering hole and lots of great viewing spots to watch the animals as they come to “join us” for a drink. At lunch we met Mandy from Johannesburg and Helen from Toronto (imagine that)!  They were actually at The Lookout Cafe when we were there so I guess we were destined to meet!  They were great travel companions and we enjoyed sharing our mutual experiences on all the game drives and the cruise on the Chobe River. 

I’m not much of a bird fan – I don’t know, maybe it was that movie…. That said, it’s hard not to get your interested piqued with all the birds here.  My favourite is the very pretty Lilac Breasted Roller which is also the national bird of Botswana.  

Although they brought the traffic to a grinding halt, we were very lucky to see a herd of hundreds of elephants cross the road as they made their way back into the forest from the river.  It took about 1/2 hour for them all to cross.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a couple other sightings we had like the cute herd of impalas who looked like they were taking a yoga class and one of the “ugly five” – the infamous warthog.

And then, in just a blink of an eye, the day was over and it was time to throw ourselves into bed to rest up for the next day’s adventure.