At Long Last, The African Safari Scheduled for 2019!: OH!! IT DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS!! Finally, WITH PHOTOS!

Monday, September 19, 2022

It's an EARLY morning because we are going into Botswana and have to cross the border. Early continental breakfast, board the boat, cross the river, climb into the 4x4s, meet the bus...and arrive at immigration. Everyone has to get their passport stamped with a day pass and be wearing a mask. And you have to step into the disinfectant to protect the animals. We have new 4x4s waiting for us, since they will be taking us into Chobe National Park.

The blue bags are protecting the fruit from marauding critters!

quite a contrast with the previous photos

We stop briefly at the Chobe Marina Lodge to "freshen up" and we're ready for the day's adventure. We aren't five minutes into the park when we see elephants so close that we can practically touch them! There are 120,000 of them in the park! It is the largest herd on the continent! More details about the trip later; but the wifi is spotty and I want to remember that we found SIX young male lions sleeping under a tree! We couldn't have been more than ten or fifteen feet from them! I thought my life was complete!

Guinea fowl have the prettiest blue heads!

Ground hornbill

You can still see the falling leaves from his snack.

Sleepy baby!

Are you lookin' at me?

elephant bones

I think he's a roan!

We continued looking for critters and saw cape buffalo and giraffes and more but our guide didn't want to stop for very long - because there had been a leopard spotting and he was sure (and quite rightly so) that we'd rather see a leopard than more of the critters we'd seen before!!

Look how close they are!

OH MY GOD!!! She ambled through the gawking tourists (all safely in their 4x4s) without a care in the world and settled in a bramble of roots and vegetation, to take a nap! Life couldn't get better!

There are more sightings but we hurry to catch up with our other group so that we can go to lunch and them a river cruise. The lunch is a nice buffet back at the Chobe Marina Lodge, and the boat is comfortable and all outside so everyone can see all around. The first highlight was a hippo confrontation! There was one on the island and another emerged from the water. The resident was not impressed and walked over to challenge him. It all happened in hippo time, which is to say, in slow motion!!

Yes, that's a giraffe skull.

Part of my critter butt series!

He thinks he's hiding!

monitor lizard!

crocodile

Hang on to mama's tail!

Cape buffalo are always startling!

That tail swishing is his way of challenging the guy on land!

But the most amazing thing was to watch all the elephants that had spent the day on the island, swim back across the river in single file! I'll try to load one of the many videos I took - we'll see if the wifi cooperates!

There are anhingas here, just like home!

Never pass up a giraffe!!

Back out of the park, through immigration, back on the bus, back on the 4x4s, back on the boat, and we're home again! There is a menu at the dock for us to select our dinner and we have a few minutes of free time. Nearly everyone chooses to shower! The dust had been so bad in the park that we wore masks part of the time!