We had an amazingly uneventful border crossing and within 10 minutes we were at a nice hotel ready to board our 9:30 Chobe river cruise. Chobe, which means "push" is a river that borders four countries in this area including Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia.
Our captain, Stanley, showed us a lot of great wildlife. He pointed out a formerly disputed island of 5 mi.² between Botswana and Namibia that eventually went to the world court and they ruled in Bots favor.
It was a delightful day and a beautiful cruise. It was unusual to me to see herds of elephant and other animals on this island. We saw more of the African fish eagle as well as Crocs and many assorted beautiful birds. Kingfishers. Snake birds. Hippos. Impala. Spoonbill. Warthog. Malibu Stork. Goliath Heron. My favorite was the wire tail swallow.
Then we went back to the hotel for a buffet lunch and boarded our Nissan pickup truck which was converted to a game drive vehicle for a land game drive to Chobe Park.
This was my least favorite drive as we were in a line of vehicles. The scenery overlooking the Chobe in the Okavango Delta was magnificent. We saw large herds of elephants and giraffes and Impala as well as a huge flotilla of Hippo.
We saw lots of the lilac brested roller and more fish eagles. We stopped for a bit of refreshment and then headed to the exit of the park. We didn't realize it but we took the open top vehicle all the way from the park to the border crossing which was quite a wind in the face experience. We got pretty lucky and made the border crossing with relative ease despite the $30 per head visa that was required. We landed back at the hotel at 5:30. After sundowners, we went to dinner at the lodge and got a great night-time view of many elephants coming to the pond for water.
We had dinner and drinks with our new friend Mike Fisher
Tomorrow we leave Zimbabwe and head to Cape Town.
We had dinner and drinks with our new friend Mike Fisher
Tomorrow we leave Zimbabwe and head to Cape Town.
No comments:
Post a Comment