From Livingstone, we took our first guided safari trip into Botswana to the Chobe National Park. Things started off a bit rocky, but in the end it turned out to be a great day.
We had heard and read that South Africa, and potentially other countries, may require to see the girls birth certificates to be allowed into the country. In all our other border crossings, we were always traveling to that country with all our gear and not once were we asked for the birth certificates. Murphy’s Law kicked in as today we were travelling to Botswana just for the day and then heading back to Livingstone in Zambia. We had asked our tour operators what we needed and they said all we needed was passports. As you might have guessed it, Botswana required the kids’ birth certificates which was an hours drive away back in Livingstone. After about 45 minutes of trying to figure out what to do, including the tour agency trying to see if they could get our hotel to go into our room to get pictures of them (which due to policy, the hotel rightfully refused to do), the border agent made Julia and I sign affidavits that we were the parents and that we would get picture of the birth certificates to our guide AND she made the guide sign one too stating he would bring those pictures to her the next day. Whew!
Our tour was supposed to include breakfast first and then have two parts, a boat tour along the Chobe River and then a jeep tour by land. Since we were late, they made up breakfast bags to go for us. For the boat tour, we were paired with another family of 4. While they were waiting for us, they heard it was another family of 4 and they had wondered if it was “the Osprey family”. When we had flown from Johannesburg to Victoria Falls a few days earlier, there was a family checking in before us that all had Osprey backpacks, just like us. We all kind of smiled at each other at the Johannesburg airport, but sure enough, they were the family waiting for us and they had accurately predicated it was us they were waiting for. So we got to know them a bit on the boat ride and shared traveling stories and that was the start of the day turning around.
Boat Tour
This turned out to be an amazing way to see lots of animals.
Our guide estimated that the little elephant was about 4 months old. It was one of the smallest we have seen and it acted like a waddling toddler tripping over itself and flopping on the ground. It was pretty cute to watch.
There were some marsh islands with nice grass that the groups of elephants were wading/swimming out to. They did use their trunks as snorkels sometimes.
As we were watching the female and young elephants crossing back and forth to the marshes, this massive male elephant came walking down the main beach. The video is a bit all over the place but shows the smaller elephant crossing and then the large male! Not sure we would have been brave enough to get this close without a guide!
Land Tour
After a lunch back at the safari camp, we started the second part of our safari. The other family was headed to an overnight camp so we got a vehicle to ourselves with the same guide that did the boat tour.
Our path took us back down close to the river again where we had seen all the elephants before and sure enough, there was a lot down there again. However, they were blocking a lot of the road. The guide was much bolder than we were in our car in Kruger and we had open sides! Some of the elephants trumpeted to warn that we were too close to their young which made it a little more exciting than we were anticipating, but we got through and got really close to some elephants. The video shows the encounter though it too is a little bouncy (hard to pay attention to the camera when you are focusing on the elephants!)
We had told our guide what we had seen in Kruger and that we wanted to see leopards or a male lion and he took us to the spot where they normally see lions and sure enough, we found some. Two females close to the road, and another group on the other side of a clump of bushes. It is a bit unnerving when the car is open to them, but he told us they really don’t see us as separate from the car and we are just one big object to them that they ignore. That is all fine and good until one stood up, looking off into the bush across the road and then walked right by the vehicle. Our guide said something like “oh, she must be hungry”. Nice kitty!
In the end, the lion and giraffe just ended up staring at each other and then the lion headed back.
We went around the bush to see the rest of the lions and there was a male lion! Our guide wasn’t sure if he was the king of this pride or not as he thought he might be a juvenile but we still count it as a win.
No giraffes were harmed that day that we know of!
The way back to Zambia was a lot less stressful then the way into Botswana. Here is the international bridge that we crossed that goes from Botswana to Zambia. However, it is only a narrow corridor between those two countries and about 25 meters to the right is Zimbabwe and 25 meters to the left is Namibia so it is almost where 4 countries meet. This is also where the Chobe River that we took the tour on meets up with the Zambezi River on its way to Victoria Falls.