Chobe National Park

By Elise.

While in Kasane we visited Chobe National Park for a morning game drive. We had organised it with our backpackers to go early to hopefully catch a glimpse of the big cats in the park. Despite organising a 6am start to be in the park our tour guide, also the owner of the backpackers, decided it would be a good time to change his tyre, and then drop off the flat tyre to a mechanic for repair. By the time we finally got to the park the sun was well and truly up, which meant we were too late for cats and too early for the other animals. Safe to say he did not get a favourable review.

Despite this we managed to see a small group of hippopotamuses in the river along with crocodiles. Lots of impala, like hundreds. Beautiful birds, such as bush turkeys, Egyptian geese, kingfishers, cormorants and other water birds. Mongoose running around in the sand. A lone buffalo, but unlike the game walk in the Okavango, we could get quite close in the safari vehicle and the buffalo simply ignored us. Giraffes and small deer.

And of course, elephants. We came across a safari traffic jam, where about five other vehicles were pulled up watching a small herd of elephants pass through the road. Zach stood up in the back of the Jeep to film them as they passed. About 2 metres away from the Jeep, a disgruntled young male, separated from the rest of the herd by our vehicle, got rather rowdy with him, stamping his little elephant feet, flapping his ears and trumpeting his displeasure. Zach was told to sit down, and the little fella passed by with a few more trumpets to receiving a little pat from his mother, almost saying 'well done, you showed that tourist who's boss'. Unfortunately we didn't get this on film, but the video Zach was shooting of the elephants ends suddenly with a loud trumpet in the background.

All in all it was a good game drive, despite the lack of cats and the hour spent watching the sun rise at the mechanics instead of the park. In hindsight, Botswana was a little out of our price range. There were many amazing safari experiences on offer but we couldn't really afford them without blowing a hole in our budget. While we got to see a lot of elephants and a couple of buffalo, the rest of the big five eluded us. Rather than spending more money chasing them in Botswana we decided to keep moving with our trip and set aside some money for a full safari experience in the Serengeti when we get to Tanzania.