Dan's Adventure

Chobe National Park in Botswana has a population of over 25,000 elephants, which when combined with the elephants in the rest of northern Botswana and Zimbabwe, forms the world’s largest concentration of elephants, over 120,000. There are so many, that culling is being considered in Chobe as there is not enough vegetation to sustain them all. Arriving at Chobe at 6.30am for an early morning game drive our hopes were understandably high, I expected to see a lot of elephants. Driving around for 3 hours we spotted numerous elephant foot prints, holes in the ground with diameters around half a metre, and lots of elephant droppings so there were definitely elephants around. The elephants were evidently experts at hide and seek though as we failed to see any at all that morning.

Until now all of our safaris had been by either mini bus or jeep, so throwing a boat into the mix in the afternoon was a welcome change. As we cruised along the Chobe, sundowners in hand, we saw many of the same animals as we had in the morning; baboons, impala, hippos, buffalo, and lots of birds. A handful of elephant made an appearance, but it was still no where near as many as I had expected.

Like all the other national parks, Chobe once more was a completely different environment. Lots of trees and plants, which makes it very easy for animals to hide, and the river, which attracts many species of birds as well as providing drinking water for the animals in Chobe. Like the Serengeti, drivers stick to the designated tracks rather than going off road like in the Masai Mara. We may not have seen as much in Chobe as in other parks, but I still loved it as it was a completely different experience.