After my visit to Victoria Falls, I spent one more night in Kasane before starting an epic fifteen day tent camping safari through northern Botswana. Strap in and get comfortable because this post is pretty epic too. My journey started with a cruise up the Chobe River, just west of Kasane.

The Chobe River marks the border between Botswana and Namibia in these parts and right in the middle is Sedudu Island. Apparently, Botswana and Namibia had to fight over who actually owns Sedudu Island in the international courts in the Hague. Botswana won. No humans are allowed on the island, except for the rangers who walk to the center of the island to raise the Botswana flag, just to remind the Namibians of their loss. The animals, of course, don’t care one way or the other.

How do all of those animals get to Sedudu Island, you ask? They swim there, even the elephants. I got lucky enough to see two herds swim across. They position the babies in the middle of all the adults and off they go.

Chobe Riverfront

After the cruise it was into the safari jeep for my long overland trip, starting in Chobe National Park. First we have to register at the main entrance, Sedudu Gate.

Chobe National Park is pretty massive, but understandably, most of the action is along the river. This park is also most famous for the crazy amount of elephants running around. In fact, Botswana has more elephants within its border than any other country on earth, and roughly a third of all the elephants in the whole of Africa. That’s a lot of hefalumps!

Day one turned out to be really fruitful. We got lucky and found a couple of lions hanging out near an elephant carcass. After they moved away from the river into the bush, we found them joined up with the rest of the pride.

No stop for snacks is complete without these red hornbilled guys begging for handouts.

We also surprisingly came across this male leopard. He had just killed a big male impala and was starting to clean it and eat.

And of course on the way back to camp for lunch we stopped to watch some hefalumps cross the road. The hefalumps are pretty much everywhere in Chobe.

The hippos stay hidden in the water all day to stay cool. All you can really hope to see is ears and eyeballs and maybe a rare lift of the head, but as the sun starts to set, they come out to graze and socialize.

Sometimes the elephants get curious about the safari jeep and get really close, like this guy below. After checking us out, him and his group crossed the road and went on their merry way toward the watering hole.

Savuti Marsh

Chobe National Park is massive. It stretches from Kasane in the northeast corner of Botswana in a southwest direction for roughly 4500 square miles. We tackled the park in three different sections. From the riverfront we drove all day in the sand until we reached Savuti Marsh where we camped for three nights. We even got stuck in the sand on the way. My guide, Jack, was none to happy about it either. He said it’s his first time ever getting stuck. Luckily, there were some other guides, a group of Namibians, and some Asian tourists who got stuck too to help us out.

We finally arrived in Savuti in the late afternoon and right away found the local lion pride being exceptionally lazy.

Also that first evening, we spotted this poor baby elephant at the watering hole all by himself. He looked like he was having a good time playing in the water, but there was no sign of his herd anywhere. We followed him for a bit when he started wandering back to the forest, but eventually lost him in the trees and we never saw him again. Did he find his herd, get adopted by another herd, or did the lions get him? I’ll never know.

You would think with the insane number of elephants in Chobe that a lost baby elephant would have no trouble getting adopted. I imagined that the group of males below found him and took him in. I need a happy ending.

The terrain in Savuti is quite a bit different from the riverfront. In the rainy season this place fills with water and floods are not uncommon, but now, it’s very very dry. Only a couple of water holes are still available, which makes finding the animals a bit easier, but it must be hard to survive here.

I don’t know if this giant boabab tree is the center of Savuti, but all roads seem to lead to it. We must have passed by this tree a dozen times or more. Boababs are also referred to as upside down trees because it looks like the roots are at the top.

The mornings usually start with my guide, Jack, driving around while looking for tracks worth following. I’m learning an awful lot about tracking on this trip.

I think we checked in on the local lion pride at least once every day. They didn’t seem very hard to find since they stay relatively close to the watering holes. Usually the adults are being lazy while the cubs goof off.

In between all the carnivore sightings, there’s no shortage of zebras, giraffe, elephants, warthogs, and the five million different kinds of antelope roaming around.

The Lion pride in Savuti is headed by two brothers who never seem to stray too far from each other. We caught up with them too a few times. The lions here in Savuti are also some of the largest and most impressive lions that I’ve seen anywhere.

There are no hippos in Savuti, but there is evidence that they once roamed around here, at a time when water was much more abundant.

I’ve learned so much about the various antelope species here. There are so many and I’m hardly an expert, but I’ve really enjoyed seeing all the different varieties.

Cheetahs were a bit of a priority for me on this trip since I didn’t get to see any on my last trip to Africa. I was lucky enough to see a female with her three cubs in Mashatu a couple of weeks ago. On this day in Savuti we had almost made it back to camp for lunch when Jack heard on the radio that someone had spotted a pair of cheetah brothers. So we turned around and Jack drove over the bumpy, sandy roads like a rally driver to get us there. Now we call him Rally Jack.

The last morning in Savuti we found the lion pride first thing. They had just killed what looked like an eland (it was hard to tell) and they were all happy as could be.

Eating is a messy and bloody affair when you’re a lion.

The adults bounced between eating and napping while the kids bounced between eating and playing.

The roan antelope is usually extremely shy and not often seen. I felt lucky to get this shot below.

On a break from our game drive Jack took us to this really beautiful grove of boabab trees.

Also on this last day we happened upon the cheetah brothers again. They had obviously just killed something and eaten. They were both exhausted and had very bloody faces.

This was our last day in Savuti, so after the morning game drive it was time for another long, bumpy, sandy drive. We stopped to have our lunch near a fairly small watering hole that had a few elephants in it. As we were eating, more and more elephants slowly came out of the trees, all males, in ones, twos, and threes until there was over twenty of them. There was some tension, some grunting, and a couple of stand offs, but no real trouble. What a sight though!

In addition to the red hornbilled beggars seen earlier, there are also these yellow hornbilled beggars in Savuti. Jack calls them flying bananas.

Warthogs are absolutely everywhere. They usually don’t let you get too close, but this guy didn’t care one bit.

Mababe Depression

It was time to leave Savuti deep in the middle of Chobe National Park and head further southwest to our last camp in the Mababe Depression for two nights. These long, bumpy, sandy drives, can be pretty rough. They’re also known as safari massages. Well when you put it like that, it’s not so bad! Anyway, the minute we came out of the forest into the wide open Mababe area I couldn’t believe my eyes. We counted ninety some elephants on the horizon, plus heaps of giraffes and impalas. It was just an incredible sight. We weren’t there more than ten minutes when suddenly, four African wild dogs came out of the trees on the hunt. They passed right in front of the vehicle, trotted down to the river, took a drink, ran upstream on the lookout for impalas (their preferred prey), and then right past our vehicle again. Wow!

For those who don’t know, African wild dogs are unbelievably rare to see. Even the researchers whose career it is to keep track of them can’t do it. I never even aspired to see them, figuring it would never happen, but here they are. It was a pretty special moment!

After the wild dogs and before heading to camp, we spotted this lone lioness walking across the marsh. Awesome!

As always, even when you don’t see the animals themselves, they leave signs all over the place.

One very common sight that I haven’t seen yet in Chobe, is hyenas. We hear them at night snooping around our camp in the middle of the night and we find tracks everywhere, but it wasn’t until Mababe that Jack actually found some. They were hanging out at their den, sleeping, arguing, and the little ones were playing around.

While driving around, whenever we pass another safari jeep, the guides stop and chat and share info about sightings. One of these guides shared a story about the night before. Apparently, some dude thought it would be a good idea to sleep out underneath the stars with his son instead of in the tent where its safe. The whole campground was woken up by this idiots screams in the middle of the night when he was woken up by a hyena nibbling on his leg. He’s lucky it wasn’t a lion because they walk through camps frequently too.

Mababe, of course, has its share of elephants too.

Not just tracks, but I’m also learning to identify different skulls too. I’ve seen hippo, elephant, zebra, eland, kudu, and lion skulls.

One morning I was woken up at about 4am by a lion roaring. It sounded like he was right outside my tent. When we started the morning game drive at 630am, we didn’t even drive a couple hundred feet from camp before seeing him.

A little later we found him nearby keeping cool under a bush. I zoomed in on him and got a phenomenal close up of him.

Hefalump tracks are absolutely everywhere!

Giraffes don’t get enough attention in Chobe National Park. They really are amazing creatures though. I just love them. For such big animals they are really cautious about every move they make. I got this guy on our way out of Mababe.

The littlest of the antelope species is the steenbuck. These guys are interesting in that they don’t live in herds. Instead, they’re pretty much solitary creatures and they don’t need water (they get enough from their food) so you won’t find them at the watering holes.

Well, this is only the first part of my fifteen day epic camping safari. I still have a week to go, but this is the end of my visit to Chobe National Park. Chobe is probably the best safari experience I’ve had in my life so far. From the daily lion sightings, cheetahs, wild dogs, even a porcupine one night that refused to pose for a photo, and all the other animals I’ve seen, this park has far exceeded my expectations. I have hundreds of other amazing photos that I can’t wait to share when I get home too.

I wonder what this next week has in store for me? Stay tuned to find out…