Elephants everywhere

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Hello again
I'm currently sitting in an internet cafe in Kasane in Botswana which is very close to the Chobe National Park. Kasane is a small town....very dusty and hot! We're staying in a camp tonight just out of town, there are 3 other trucks in the camp so I'm thinking it may be a big night.

So since I last wrote a lot has happened......we went out on our sunset wine canoe cruise and had a fantastic time, the first hippo sighting was a little scary! In the morning of that day we went out on a walking tour with some of the local guys and saw a couple elephants wandering around we then went to the Victoria Falls.....wow that was amazing, I've never seen anything like it.

After a long walk back to the camp and a swim to cool down we went out on the canoes and proceeded to drink the canoe dry....we were the only ones on the cruise and there were 2 of us plus a paddler in each canoe....as I said we saw hippos, a baby crocodile and lots of beautiful birds. After the cruise we merrily went for dinner then caught up with local guys we'd been on the walking tour with earlier....what happened after that was my introduction to having fun Zim style.....to cut a long story short we made it back to our tents at 2am and had to be up again at 6am to hit the road to Botswana.

We arrived in Kasane and were herded onto boats for a tour up the river into the Chobe National Park, there were hippos, warthogs, buffalo and so many elephants. We were really close to them at one stage as they were crosssing the river and playing in the water......it was awesome, the highlight for me so far. We had dinner down by the river watching the elephants near the water.....at one stage an elephant went to walk down where we were and took a double take when he saw us....they have pretty bad eyesight so I think he probably smelt us first....he would have been only 20 metres away when he saw us!

We then went on a safari through the park looking for animals and got to see more elephants (there are more than 45000 in the park), hippos, zebra, giraffes, impala, water backs and more ugly warthogs....and the birds are amazing. We finished up at about 6pm and went to our camp in the middle of the park.....once again quite scary at first but after a while you got used to the sounds of elephants thrashing through the trees. The mornings are the best time to see the big cats so we left camp at 6am for a couple of hours and thought we weren't going to be lucky but in the last 10 minutes we spotted both a leopard and a male lion.....very cool!

So now we are in Kasane, we stay here tonight then head to the Okavango Delta tomorrow. This is the part I've been really looking forward to so am pretty excited. I'll try to put some photos on next time....the only problem is going to be deciding which of the 400 I've taken to put on!

Hope everyone is well and thanks to those of you who have posted messages and sent me email :-)

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Comments

[Troy Brown]

very jelous
Hi Tracey, Sounds like you are having a wonderful time. Stay safe and I look forward to your next blog. It's like a TV show now and I am hanging out for the next episode.... TB XX.

[Jane]

Fellow traveller
Hi Trace Just got back from NY today and am feeling a bit jetlagged myself. Had an awesome time and found out why its called the city that never sleeps...simply too much to do and when you do try to sleep there is too much noise from all the traffic and people on the streets to get a good nights sleep. Luckily well conditioned with the kids so survived on little sleep! I managed 500 photos in one week but no wild animals. Look forward to doing a photo night when you get down here! Have fun in the sun :) Love me x