Chobe National Park

One week ago we took a road trip up to the town of Kasane in the northeast corner of Botswana to visit Chobe National Park and Victoria Falls, which actually straddles the borders of Zimbabwe and Zambia.  Willie and I took a taxi out to the Gaborone airport to pick up the rental car, a process that took three times as long as it should have.  Of course, nobody was attending the Budget counter.  After the Budget attendant finally appeared, he wrote down all of my information on somebody else's reservation, the estimate for which ended up being way more than the quote we had gotten.  Budget was also out of the model that we had reserved, so had to upgrade us to another vehicle, but the attendant took a while to understand why we should still pay the rate for the vehicle we had reserved.  It is reassuring that even in relatively developed Gaborone one can experience vintage African efficiency!  With the paperwork finally complete, they showed me to the car.  I strapped Willie into his car seat and then opened the left door to get into the driver's seat, but with a wide grin the Budget guy advised , "Sir, other side."  Of course in Botswana, which was a British protectorate not long ago, you drive on the left side of the road.  One adapts fairly quickly to driving on the "wrong" side of the road - the consequences are severe if you don't - but a few times up in Kasane Nancy, like the Budget guy, had to shout "David, other side!"

What's wrong with this picture?

Due to the arduous car renting process, we left Gabs bit later in the afternoon than we had planned and made it to our first stop, Palapye, about an hour after sundown, which was unnerving.  Driving at night is not recommended in Botswana.  As the temperatures plummet at night, the animals tend to congregate on the roads, drawn to the warm asphalt.  Plowing into an elephant at 120 km/hour would not be pretty.  Even if you survived the crash, the angry elephant would probably finish you off!  Also, unlike predominantly Muslim Mali, where we spent a year in 1996, drinking and consequently drunk driving is more prevalent in Botswana contributing to the increased danger of driving at night. In Palapye, we piled into a small room with many beds at Camp Itumela.  After an early breakfast, we hit the road again for Kasane.

Camp Itumela in Palapye

Camp Itumela

Breakfast at Camp Itumela

We stopped in Francistown, the second largest city in Botswana after Gaborone, to fill up with gas, money, and food.  Francistown's main street is lined with jacaranda trees (the purple-blue ones), which are in full bloom this time of year.  The jacarandas create a carpet of colorful blossoms below their canopies.  I am not sure why they paint all of the curbs with the yellow and black checker-board pattern you see below.  Though I like their appearance, keeping the miles of curbs painted seems like it would be a long-term maintenance headache.

Downtown Francistown

Downtown Francistown

The landscape along the road was both unremarkable and expansive.  Botswana is relatively flat and arid.  The vast stretches of unchanging savannah-like landscape with widely spaced trees and desert scrub and the limited number of towns and villages seem to exaggerate the vastness and wildness of this place (Botswana is roughly the size of Texas).  This uniformity made the long drive blur into a sort of timeless endeavor until we hit a very bad stretch of road, about which we had been warned, roughly three hours from our destination.  For about 125 km the road was riddled with deep, gaping potholes that threatened to swallow whole our ill-suited little Audi hatchback.  Again, we were racing the clock, trying to get to Kasane before sundown, for we were truly entering an area with higher densities of animals (we had already seen a solitary elephant along the side of the road).  Fortunately, we made it to Kasane with wheels and axles intact.

Stretch of bad road

Pothole city!

We had planned to camp at the Chobe Safari Lodge in Kasane along the banks of the Chobe River, but the campsite was at capacity, so we ended up staying in two rondavels the first night.  We secured a camp site early the next morning by schmoozing with the campsite guards.  The Chobe Safari Lodge is terrific.  Vervet monkeys, mongoose, and warthogs freely roam the grounds, which the boys loved, but crocs and hippos also lurk along the banks of the river, which terrified us.  They do warn you not to stray too closely to the river banks.  The lodge also has a great restaurant, swimming pool, and terrace overlooking the river.  We had trouble finding the correct fuel for our MSR Whisperlite International camp stove, which burns white gas or kerosene, so ended up defaulting to the buffet until the fuel mystery was resolved.  Can't say I will ever sample impala or antelope again!  Unbeknownst to me, kerosene is called "paraffin" here (the solid form being the wax that goes on the bottom of skis).

Rondavels at the Chobe Safari Lodge

Vervet monkeys at the lodge

Playful Vervet monkey

Warthog

Chobe Safari Lodge

Pool and restaurant

Pool terrace and Chobe River

Willie in the kiddie pool

Three monkeys in the tent!

Mama monkey

Elliot talks a bit about the animals we saw on safari and has photos on his blog.  We took two different three hour safaris; the first in the afternoon and the second early in the morning.  Most of the safari companies use Land Cruisers with canopies decked out with three rows of seats ascending toward the back, like the one we rode in below.

About to leave

On safari!

Chobe National Park expands west from Kasane along the Chobe River, which forms the border between Botswana and Namibia.  Chobe is probably best know for its elephants, having the highest concentration of elephants anywhere on the continent, which we wouldn't deny.  Elephants were everywhere, almost like deer in the US, and this despite the fact that they are starting to move away from the river as the increasing rains begin to provide other scattered sources of water.  Probably the coolest elephant experience was watching a solitary male cross the Chobe River to the Namibia side as the sun was setting (it became apparent that a standard guide remark was "There are no fences. The animals can roam freely between countries...they are not required to have visas.").

Elephant crossing the Chobe River...

up the bank...

...and into Namibia

Baby baboons

Bored baboon

The safari turn-around point

The elephants in the photos below were engaged in some kinky stuff! Good thing we are maintaining this adult-oriented blog!  I had not realized that this was a "five-legged elephant" (another remark from the guide) until viewing the photos back home in Gabs.  I also hadn't noticed the croc resting on the bank behind the elephants.

African sex education

Willie decided to expose himself too...watch out for crocs!

Our guide, Innocent (our other guide was named "Stanza")

Bundled up for the morning safari (Mitchell is not a morning person)

Mitchell enjoying the safari (how much did we pay for this?)

On the drive up to Kasane, we passed a sign indicating that we were crossing the Tropic of Capricorn, which splits Botswana in two.  Of course after tens of thousands of dollars worth of education, Nancy and I looked at each other blankly wondering what exactly the Tropic of Capricorn signified.  Wikipedia: the Tropic of Capricorn is the furthest latitude south where the sun can be directly overhead on the solstice (the Tropic of Cancer is the Northern hemisphere version).  Why bother with formal schooling when there is Wikipedia?

Even with the solstice a ways off, dawn and dusk are significantly more sudden in the tropics because the sun descends directly (i.e. more perpendicularly) down to the horizon.  It's as if somebody is flipping off the light switch.  Seattle, being only a stones throw from the north pole, experiences a much more gradual transition to darkness, since the sun traces a much lower arc across the sky (in Seattle the sun never gets more than 65 degrees from the horizon).  I can't say that I am yearning for the dark Seattle winter, but the suddenness of the  end of the day in Botswana takes some getting used to.

Tropic of Capricorn

Sunset in Chobe