Thursday 9th May 2024
By the end of Thursday, I definitely had all three!
I think I have managed on this holiday to severely overuse the word ‘wow’ and Thursday was one hell of a ‘wow’ day.
So far everything on this trip has gone exactly to time. Knowing that was the case, we were up and ready well before the pick-up time of 7:10am, all set and excited to head off on a full day safari in the Chobe National Park in north-eastern Botswana.
This is going to be a pretty quick post, due to being two days behind!
After our pick-up we drove an hour west to the Botswana border, where we again went through immigration formalities to ‘leave’ Zimbabwe, then ‘arrive’ a short 100m later into Botswana. Soon after we arrived in Kasane, where we transferred from our mini-bus to a waiting boat for a 3-hour tour of the Chobe River. There were six passengers (four of us plus a lovely young couple from Guam) and our always-smiling captain who then guided us around the river to explain the area and show us lots of animals. Again, there were many hippos, but alongside the river we also saw elephant, buffalo, crocodiles and lots of impala! We often just stopped the boat and drifted along in silence to see the animals in their natural environment. WOW!
Back to the Chobe Safari lodge where we had boarded the boat, for a surprisingly delicious buffet lunch, including steamed banana pudding, ice-cream and custard for dessert which Dave was most pleased about 😉
We then hopped into our traditional safari vehicle for the ‘land’ part of our safari, and we entered the Chobe National Park about 15 minutes later.
GUESS WHAT?
During this part of the day, I got to see not just one, but about 40 giraffes!!! OMG I was so excited. We also saw mongeese, zebras, more elephants (including such cute little ones frolicking in the mud), lots more impala, egrets, vultures and eagles.
Seeing a giraffe in the wild was my number one item to tick off on this list, so you can image my squeal of delight when I saw the first one! Our great guide taught us so much about each animal, how the pecking order worked, and we even learned that the gestational period for a giraffe is 15 months, and their babies weigh about 70kg born!
Again, this part of the trip was three hours long, and I was pretty exhausted, by the time we got back to Victorias Falls after 7pm, so Dave and the kids went and got take away for dinner and I had a long, hot bath!
Tomorrow’s blog will be longer – with all the details of meeting up with Dave’s friends, Robbie and Liane and Allan and Sharon.
Such a fun and WOW day!