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.

Lions and Leopards and Cheetahs, oh my!

Since we don’t have tigers or bears here in Africa, I had to alter the title slightly.  But I since lions, leopards and cheetahs are some of the most difficult animals to spot in Africa I consider myself very fortunate that I got to see all three in one day during my camping trip.

As I mentioned previously, I took last week off from blogging out of necessity.  I was camping in Namibia and didn’t have daily access to Internet during my trip, hence my temporary silence.  However, now that I am back online and took a record 2148 pictures during my 10-day camping trip, I will spend the next few days catching you up on my adventure.

I booked the camping trip with Wild Dog Safaris and they did ensure a wild ride.  Our tour guide and driver, George, along with our camp assistant, Manfred, took 7 of us (2 Germans, 1 Brit, 1 French girl, an American couple that is currently living in Bangladesh, and me) on a 3,000 kilometer trip around the northern half of the country.

I haven’t been camping in a few years but was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it this time around.  We departed from Windhoek on Friday, December 20^th and headed north to Etosha National Park.  Etosha is the largest national park in Namibia; it is three times the size of Holland.  It was given its name because the Etosha Pan is located almost entirely within the park.  The pan makes the park unique compared to many of the other national parks I’ve visited in Africa.  Most of the national parks I’ve seen have the brush and mopane and baobab trees, but because of the salt pans Etosha looked quite different.  Believe it or not the pelicans and flamingos are particularly attracted to the salt pans, but we saw plenty of other animals wondering around as well.  Here you can see one of the salt pans which seems to extend forever:

While on our way north we saw plenty of the typical animals which I’ve already mentioned before: baboons, monkeys, impala, kudu, eland, oryx, giraffe, elephants.  But there were a couple of animals I was VERY excited to see.  I’ve seen lions before, but we saw three females hunting a wildebeest.  I’ve never seen lions hunt before in real life and it was awesome.  In the end the wildebeest got away, but we spent about 20 minutes watching with baited breath:

Later that same evening we found two male lions roaring, calling the females over:

We also saw a leopard that had just made a kill.  It was interesting that he took the meat, jumped up into a tree nearby and then began to eat it.  Given the fact he is licking his lips here, I’m guessing it tasted pretty good:

The good thing about seeing a leopard and cheetahs in the same day is that I now can visually tell them apart.  Prior to seeing both of them almost back to back I couldn’t distinguish the difference.  But as you can see here, cheetahs have solid black spots (as opposed to the leopard’s multicolored spots) and black stripes down the front of their faces.  I’m sure there are many other differences that I don’t know yet, but at least now I will be able to tell what I am looking at, a leopard or a cheetah:

I have plenty of other fun pictures from Etosha, but I will save them for another day.

A quick shower and a free drink

Right now I am in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe for the UNWTO General Assembly.  While I do have a pretty packed schedule of meetings, all work and no fun makes for a dull time.  Fortunately, the conference program includes several side trips and extracurricular activities for attendees when meetings are not in session.

On Sunday afternoon before the Opening Ceremony I went to Victoria Falls along with a number of other UNWTO delegates.  It is currently winter, which means it is dry season here in Southern Africa.  As a result Victoria Falls is quite low.  There is still plenty of water flowing over the Falls, but to put in perspective the difference in seasons, during the rainy season about 500 million liters of water fall each minute.  In the dry season the water level drops to 10 million liters per minute.  As an amateur Vic Falls tourist this means absolutely nothing to me, but since I can do math a 50-fold increase between seasons sounds like a lot.  I was very impressed.  I even got a little wet from the spray off the Falls.  But, I may have to schedule another trip back here in high season to see the difference for myself.  Here are a couple of pictures for your viewing enjoyment:

 

Yesterday I had some free time before our meetings began in the afternoon, so I booked a tour with one of the many tour companies here in town.  It was a game drive through Zambezi National Park followed by a canoe trip down the Zambezi River.  The Zambezi River is the fourth-longest river in Africa behind the Nile, Congo and Niger Rivers.  It flows from eastern Angola into Namibia, through Botswana, along the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, flows over Victoria Falls, then into Mozambique and finally empties into the Indian Ocean.  Here is the Zambezi River with Zimbabwe on the left bank and Zambia on the right bank:

As for the game drive through Zambezi National Park it was great.  I finally saw an elephant, lots of them actually, so I now feel like I’m in Africa.  There were also plenty of giraffes, warthogs, water buffalo, kudu, hyenas and vultures.  The vultures and hyenas were actually feeding on the carcass of a dead buffalo and they made a quick meal of him.  According to our guides the buffalo was killed by a lion and the hyenas and vultures were just finishing him off.  Sadly though we did not see any lions.  Maybe next time.

After the game drive and canoe trip we were departing the park and right as we reached the gate we saw an elephant was blocking the entrance.  We sat there waiting for him to move, which he didn’t for nearly 10 minutes.  The reason he was so hesitant to surrender his real estate was because the park rangers were watering the lawn directly out front.  One of them abandoned the hose and walked away, during which time an elephant wandered up and took advantage of a free drink:

Elephant Hills Hotel

As should be expected with travel in Africa, my trip from Gaborone to Victoria Falls was a little more exciting than I would have preferred. First the computer system at the Gaborone Airport was down, so our tickets had to be written by hand.  This wouldn’t have been such a problem except for the fact I did not have a direct flight to Zimbabwe.  I had to connect in Johannesburg, South Africa which meant when I got there I had to go through customs, exit the airport, pick up my checked bag, reenter the airport and check in separately for my connecting flight, and then go through customs and security again.

Fortunately when I arrived in Zim passport control was expecting us, so those of us here for the UNWTO conference were expedited through customs.  I think it was barely five minutes from the time I exited the plane until I was on the shuttle to my hotel. Now that is service!

I’m staying at the host hotel on the Zimbabwe side which is convenient.  Not that it makes a huge difference because about half the events are on the Zambia side, plus most of the social events are at other venues.  But being at the host hotel is nice because I don’t have to travel off-site for the first three days and I was able to register here.

Unfortunately when I tried to register for the conference there was some confusion over who I am and why I am here.  Apparently they forgot they gave me a special permit to attend, and the person who granted me that permission was not here to verify it.  Lucky for me, my charming personality went a long way and they quickly gave me credentials.  So I am in business.

Meetings start tomorrow which I’m looking forward to, but since I had some free time late this afternoon I wandered around my hotel for a bit.  My room overlooks the golf course and I saw there was a walking path, so I figured I would head in that direction.  One of the caddies approached me and asked if I wanted him to show me the animals on the course.  I figured, why not? 

On the course I saw impala and monkeys:

 Kudu:

Warthogs:

Guinea fowl:

Crocodiles:

And Waterpaks?  At least this is what my friend Vincent called them. I’m still not sure this is the correct name of this animal, but it appears to be a cross between a moose and a deer:

 

It certainly wasn’t the prettiest golf course I’ve ever seen, but it was reasonable given the environment.  Of course, there were additional obstacles here you probably wouldn’t see elsewhere.  For instance, the warthogs really like to dig up the grass, so you see these large areas of mud provide golfers with the same challenges as a sand trap, only messier.

And then of course there are the monkeys.  I watched this poor guy hit a ball, it landed, and then a monkey ran off with it.  Then the guy throws his club on the ground and shouts, “Not again!”

I suppose it could have been worse.  There could have been elephants on the course here at the Elephant Hills Hotel.