Three Peat

For my last weekend in Africa, I decided to return to Chobe once again. I realize that it had only been a month since I was there, but I don’t know when I will be back in Africa and wanted to take in the wildlife one last time.

This time, the group from the volume house that was going was smaller, there were only four of us, so we had tons of room in the van on the way to the border.

Upon meeting our guide, we had our quick coffee and pastry and the set out on the boat cruise. For this part of the trip we were not joined by any other folks and we also were tolls tent only 2 others would be joining us for the game drives and camping.

It was quite interesting how much the river had changed in only 3 weeks. We saw a lot less crocodiles, and the hippos were more active. Some of my favorites from this part of the journey are:

We also saw another elephant crossing and and ensuing mud slinging, maybe rye next time you tire of political adds you can remember this picture and smile for a least a short time.

And, I saw a few new birds including:

And I got a couple of good pictures of some old favorites.

When we returned to the hotel for lunch, we met the two folks who would be joining us for the rest of our trip. In my opinion, we really lucked out, it was a woman who originally came to Africa as a volunteer years ago who was taking a young girl who was essentially her unofficially adopted granddaughter. So it was great to be joined by folks with similar mind sets as ours.

Before we reached the park gates we were treated to a great treat of seeing wild (also known as painted) dogs.

We then began what turned into a tour of babies (and a few other things) with an elephant nursing and a baby hippo.

It seems not matter how many elephants I see, I can’t stop taking photos of them. Not sure what it is, but the results are often pretty cool.

The giraffes also work their magic on me fairly often.

Near the end of the day we finally spotted some lions, they were pretty far off, but we could see them, especially with our binoculars.

A little later we saw one a bit closer, but that was to turn out to be it for the weekend, despite searching (too much in some of our minds) a lot the next day. We did hear them from camp that night, but didn’t see them again.

But before heading to camp, we saw a few zebras and had some amazing views of the sunset.

At camp, we once again had great food and an awesome fire. In addition, we had a full moon that night to enjoy.

Amazingly, it was quite a bit warmer than three weeks earlier, which meant I slept a lot better and was thus ready to go looking, unsuccessfully as noted above, for lions early in the morning.

Despite searching so much, we did get a few other treats, including an amazing sunrise to go with the sunset from the night before.

I was the first to spot both a black backed jackal and a new bird, the southern carmine bee-eater, which was migrating through at this time.

And we got a very special treat of seeing a baby giraffe among other giraffe phot ops.

Plus a few more zebras and another super cute baby elephant.

We also witnessed a very unhappy elephant, the videos of whom I can’t include here, but suffice it to say, there was quite a bit of trumpeting going on.

Finally, we were treated to one last view of a large group of elephants, yes including a baby, near the river giving us some great photos with reflections in the pools along the banks.