Chobe National Park and NYE

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Sitting at a small cafe in Kasane, Botswana it is the last day of 2007 as I write this entry and enjoy the best capuccino I've had since leaving Cape Town. It has certainly been an interesting year - the purchase of Mercury by HP and the subsequent restructuring, the decision to take time off and the traveling in South America and Africa (so far) have definitely made 2007 a year to remember.

After leaving the Delta, we drove ~700 kilometres north to the Kasane region and the Chobe National Park where we would spend a couple of days and celebrate New Years Eve. Along the way, we spotted several elephants in the bush right next to the road and were able to stop and observe them at very close quarters.

Home to the densest population of elephants in the world, Chobe is the premier wildlife park in Botswana - there are more than 50,000 elephants living within the park's confines. As such, you can imagine our disappointment (and surprise) when we saw ZERO elephants during a 3 hour game drive around the park!! After an evening of heavy rain, we got up at 5.15am to maximise the opportunity to see game (most animals are more active early in the morning and in the late evening), unfortunately most of the animals had decided to stay indoors and avoid the wet weather, as aside from a few birds, one hippo and the barest glimpse of a crocodile's skull peeking through the water we saw nothing. It just goes to show what a HUGE impact the weather (and luck) has on wildlife viewing.... :-(

Luckily Chobe had a chance to redeem itself as we had a game cruise that evening - and redeem itself it did - the game cruise was amazing (though still no elephants!). To start with we observed some beautiful birds including honey eaters and the Fish Hook Eagle, before spying crocodiles and heaps of hippos. The highlight was when I captured a hippo launching itself halfway out of the water and opening its jaws really, really wide - I'd never seen anything like it. The other great moment was when a hippo we'd been watching on land ambled into the water and proceeded to charge the boat we were on - as the boat was quite a big barge I have to give the hippo points for trying, but his aggression was impressive.

Back at camp, the New Years Eve dinner and party kicked off and we spent the next several hours having a great time - the highlight was when some South African guy had his horn (musical instrument) snapped in two at about 4am for being an inconsiderate SOB. The next morning hung over, tired and muddy (it had been raining all night and the campsite was a mudpit to begin with), we packed our wet, dirty tents boarded the truck and headed for "The Waterfront" in Livingstone - the last stop on the first section of the tour and the point at which we would farewell those that had been annoying us for the last 3 weeks, as well as some of those with whom we had become good friends.

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Comments

[Craig Goldsmith]

Love the Hippo shots
Hey Dan, I loved looked at this again (on a bigger screen) these are fantastic! Well done mate.