Ch-Ch-Ch-Chobe

The best thing about living in Botswana is that we have more wildlife here than anywhere else in Africa.  One of the best places to see that wildlife is in Chobe National Park.  Back in September I mentioned I visited an elephant orphanage when I was in Kenya for a conference at the same time as the terrorist attack.  The reason the baby elephants were in the orphanage was because their mothers were killed, many by poachers, before the young were old enough to care for themselves.  Africa in general has a lot of problems with poachers, but we are fortunate in Botswana that we are largely exempt from this problem.  In fact, we have the opposite problem: we have too many animals, particularly elephants.

Botswana is home to approximately half of the 400,000 elephants in Africa.  And about 100,000 of Botswana’s elephants live in Chobe National Park.  My visitors, Ashleigh and Amanda, were particularly keen to see elephants during their trip.  In an effort to satisfy their request I took them to Chobe.  We stayed at Kwalape Lodge in Kasane, which is adjacent to the park.  Since we were on a budget, and I wanted the girls to get a different experience since we stayed in a chalet previously, we opted to stay in safari tents.  They were basic, but met our needs:

While in Chobe we went on a boat cruise which is always a fun way to see the animals as they like to congregate along the shore and in the water.  I think all three of us took about a thousand pictures each, but a select few follow.  Here is a picture of Ashleigh in the boat making friends with a couple of kudu a few feet away:

And here is Amanda (before her sunglasses broke) with the elephants eating grass:

We saw hundreds of hippos:

I’m sure I am forgetting a few animals, but we saw water buffalo, kudu, impala, crocodile, monkeys, hippos, water monitor lizards, warthogs, giraffes, and of course elephants.  And since you can never have too many pictures of elephants, here is a small group, from a much larger herd, drinking on the riverbank:

We took our cruise in the late afternoon and were treated to a beautiful sunset on the ride home:

This trip reminded me how much I will miss Botswana when I leave.

My First Press Tour to Chobe National Park

I am not a member of the press, and I have no real intention of becoming one.  But I was recently invited on a press tour by the Director of the Botswana Tourism Organization (BTO).  BTO is basically the main marketing body for all of tourism here in Botswana.  BTO does not make policy; the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism (MEWT) does that.  But BTO takes the policies which MEWT makes and finds ways to implement them and increase tourism throughout the country.

Since the UNWTO conference was held right next door by our neighbors to the north (Zimbabwe and Zambia) BTO decided to take advantage of the fact there were so many media correspondents in the region and arranged several press tours in hopes of some free PR.  Fortunately for me, the Director of the BTO invited me to tag along so I could see some of the sights.  I was so happy to participate because I teach about some of these areas in my class, I haven’t done any real tourism since I arrived in Botswana, and it was a free trip!  So, I really appreciated the opportunity.

I haven’t spent much time around journalists, so the trip was as much about seeing the animals in their natural habitats as it was about observing how the media operates.  In a way I felt a little bit of peer pressure.  Granted, they all knew I wasn’t “one of them” and they were very welcoming, but as I watched them work I felt like I was being a bit of a slacker and needed to keep up.  To put this statement in perspective, I would watch them taking hundreds of photos in a matter of seconds of one bird.  I would take one picture of the same bird and then call it quits.  But then I would watch them continue to snap more photos, this time with different cameras!  I would think about it for a second and consider that maybe I missed something.  Then I would take another picture of the bird.  This behavior: action-observation-reaction-repeat; continued to gain momentum until I was taking hundreds of pictures within seconds of the same animal.  By noon I had taken 942 photos.  And then what do you think happened? My camera battery died.

It turned out the expiration of my battery was a blessing in disguise.  In the morning we took a boat trip along the Chobe River and were able to see (and photograph) all kinds of animals.  But, by the time the game drive began three hours later I was forced to watch and enjoy since my camera was out of juice.  Below are some of the highlights from the trip.

Journalists taking a million pictures of an animal:

An elephant swimming from the main land to an island in the middle of the river:

Crocodile in the forefront, impala in the middle, water buffalo waaaaaay in the distance:

Hungry, hungry hippos having some lunch:

Overall it was an excellent trip.  I have no doubt I will visit the area again, especially when I have visitors. I did get tons of pictures and after looking at them I understand why the journalists take so many photos.  Often it wasn’t the first shot which was the best one, but the seventh or eighth which I preferred.  Thank goodness for digital.