We’ve spent the last few days staying in the campground at the Chobe Safari Lodge. We’re in the very far north of Botswana, where it meets the borders of Namibia,Zambia and Zimbabwe. From our campsite, we can look across the Chobe River and see Namibia. Pinned to a post nearby is a ‘Beware of crocs’ sign. Just a hundred or so metres along a path is a ‘Beware of hippos’sign. Yep, we’re in Africa. We’ve been here a week so far, and have seen and done so much already.

Yesterday, Sunday, we planned to drive into the Chobe National Park just for a look, then do a boat cruise on the Chobe River in the afternoon as our Victoria Falls travelling companions had done it and strongly recommended it. The morning visit to Chobe failed because we weren’t allowed to drive in with just a 2-wheel drive car. Which is fair enough – the park rangers were probably sick of rescuing silly tourists. So we visited the local shops, bought more bananas because  cheeky vervet monkey had stolen (stolen!) Greg’s last ‘nana out of the boot of the car. We also bought some fine Botswana steaks to have for dinner after our boat cruise. They cost $1 each and they were delicious!

The cruise was excellent. We saw hundreds of elephants, dozens of hippos, a couple of groups of antelopes, a few crocs and a couple of buffalo. Plus lots of birds. I read somewhere that the Chobe National Park area has the highest concentration of elephants in Africa. We watched them feeding, playing in the water and just generally doing the things elephants do. One group had a tiny (by elephant standards) baby, probably just a few days old, but he kept up with his mother, siblings, aunts and grandmother. The males get kicked out of the group  by the matriarch when they are teenagers, to stop inbreeding.

We saw groups of hippos eating, always with at least one companion bird by their side, plus groups swimming and loll