Game Viewing at Chobe

Chobe National Park covers 11,700 sq. km of northern Botswana and is noted for its elephants. For three days, we spent six hours a day either in a jeep or a boat watching the drama, pathos, and comedy of life in the wild. Since my only previous experience with game drives was via television, seeing the "pop-top" vans and thundering herds of game across the Kenyan plain, you can imagine my surprise when I found myself in an open jeep sitting in the middle of an elephant herd and boating close enough to crocodiles to touch them (no, I didn’t).

We stayed at the Chobe Game Lodge, the only lodge inside the Park boundaries, though there are several safari lodges and tented camps outside the Park. The lodges are expensive and most offer tours through the Park, but there are campgrounds in the area and you can drive yourself through the Park in a 4WD. There is a fee to enter the park, but if you’re with a tour, the fee is usually included.

Quick Tips:

There is a reason for the "safari" look. Bright colors, especially white, is a no-no simply because it stands out so vividly in the bush, and because it is not a natural color here so it spooks the animals. A white hat or shoes, I was told since I had both, was acceptable because the animals might mistake you for birds who sport white heads or feet. Try for the khakis, camouflage greens, browns, anything earthy-colored.

Take more film than you think you could possibly use and an extra camera, in case the ever-present dust clogs the high-tech innards of one of them. If you have a telephoto, this is the place to bring it. Birds, sitting in the bare tree branches are incredibly photogenic and usually further away than a 50mm can do justice to. Then again, the elephants and hippos and buffalo are usually so close you need a wide-angle to get the whole animal in the picture.

If you come in winter, don’t laugh when they suggest layers, warm hat, and gloves. Those pre-dawn game drives in an open jeep are cold.

Best Way To Get Around:

Chobe National Park is about a two-hour drive from Victoria Falls, depending on how long it takes you to get through the border. We were with a tour (all three of us, plus guide and driver), so with A&K emblazoned all over the side of the van, we had no trouble. However, those traveling by private car looked like they were being asked to remove everything from their cars for inspection. You can also fly into Kasane, the nearest town.

If you drive through the Park on your own, 4WD is the only way to go. The sand is deep in spots and the tracks are very rough.

Even in the lap of luxury (Liz Taylor and Richard Burton spent honeymoon #2 here) there are rules. Don’t leave the windows and doors to your room open because the monkeys will get in and trash it. Don’t pet the warthogs, they just look cute, but those tusks mean business.

Then there are more subtle reminders that you have left civilization behind. The monkeys who leap onto your breakfast table to steal fruit, the night noises you can’t quite identify, the stories you hear in the bar, like the guide who told us the closest she had come to being killed by an elephant was when she walked right into a large bull while making her way to the dining room one evening. Oops! I must admit I kept a wary eye on the shadows as we made our way along the dimly lit path to our room that night.

Said room, like most of them, was in one of the outer buildings on either side of the main lodge. It was large, comfortable and furnished in Rhodesian teak. The walls were covered with local art and the requisite mosquito netting drifted around the bed. We had a large balcony with lounge chairs where we could relax and watch the warthogs circumvent the fence built to keep them off the grass. Despite their concentrated effort, the grounds are beautifully maintained and nearly every bush bloomed with color. The lodge itself is long and low with wide arches and tile floors – all the guidebooks call the style Moorish – and most of the public spaces are open to the outside. They have a beautiful pool surrounded with flowering bushes, a gift shop with the usual t-shirts, baseball caps, and books on local flora and fauna (I bought one of each of the above), as well as absolutely exquisite gold jewelry way out of my price range.

After cleaning up from our evening drives, we made a habit gathering in the bar upstairs, where we could swap lies about the day or shoot a little pool while waiting for the "dinner bell" – native drums played by local drummers. The cuisine is mostly Continental and I was told all the food was brought in from South Africa. The variety is plentiful, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. The food is served buffet style, but in the morning, you could order fabulous omelets whipped up right in front of you, and in the evening there were waiters to carve your meat to order.

The restaurant is on an open terrace and the sounds of the bush were all around us: the long, low rumble of the elephants, the rush of the river a few hundred feet away, the chatter of monkeys, the muted clatter of silverware and whispered conversations around us. And the air. There is something very special about the African air.

My backside hitting the cold metal of the jeep’s seat did more to wake me up than coffee. One tends to think of Africa as hot. Well, it is in summer, but we were here in May (winter in the southern hemisphere) and the pre-dawn chill, compounded by being in an open jeep, made me very glad we had warm jackets, several layers of sweaters, hats, and gloves. After my first encounter with the metal seat, I was also grateful for our driver’s thoughtful pile of warm blankets. As the sun rose, I could empathize with the baboons sitting in patches of sunlight, all facing the rising sun, thawing out from the cold night like some religious gathering.

Our morning drives started in lobby of the Lodge where we were served chunks of rusk, sort of a safari version of sea biscuits or hard tack. Got rather used to it by the second day, washed down with tea or coffee, and it certainly helped tide us over until we got back for breakfast.

While the afternoon cruises seemed to be mostly birds, hippos and crocs; the sunset drives, primarily elephants (they call them eles), the dawn drives were a free-for-all. Every morning we’d see something different. Much of the landscape is sandy with low, dense scrub sprinkled with dead trees, compliments of the ravenous elephants. However, the stark branches made elegant perches for the dozens of eagles we saw.

Among the other sightings were: baboons grooming (after they’d thawed out), an African wild cat scampering with the giraffes; an interrupted impala courtship (including a good tongue lashing by the handsome suitor for our rudeness), a Chobe bushbuck, very shy and found only in this area, and so well camouflaged that even after our driver pointed him out we had trouble finding him. We saw small herds of skittish impala; puku, which look like impala, only darker and stockier; glimpses of even more skittish sable antelope; Cape buffalo who aren’t the least bit shy and have attitudes to match their stony glare; and, of course, eles. Our guide also showed us the tiny creatures of Africa, including an army of ants on the move and a migration of frogs, which looked like leaves flitting in the wind.

Though we didn’t see any kills, we saw plenty of evidence of death in the wild: a Cape buffalo stripped to ribs, skull and spine by lion, and the carcass of one very large elephant 100 yards off the track. Even at that distance, and the fact he was three weeks dead, striped white with vulture droppings, the stench was substantial.

We had a little bass boat to skim us along the Chobe River after lunch every day. First day out, we were barely past the Lodge grounds before we watched our first drama unfold. Three pied kingfishers took on a monitor lizard trying to steal eggs from their nests (which are actually holes in the side of the riverbank). We watched the lizard dig into the hole while the kingfishers dive-bombed him with their formidable beaks. They fought the good fight, but, unfortunately, the lizard won.

On to the hippos and our second drama. The river was full of them, lazing mid-stream, only eyes and ears above the waterline (remember the Jungle ride at Disneyland?). We passed family groups wading in the shallows and wallowing in the mud to protect their tender skin from sunburn (I kid you not). Occasionally, we would get too close and were warned off their territory with wide-mouth yawns.

One afternoon, on the grassy edge of the river, we found a badly injured hippo with large chunks of flesh hanging from his side. A few hundred yards further up river we caught up with the hoodlum hippos who had "allegedly" done the deed. They must have still been high from the tussle because they chased us – they actually run through the water at an amazing speed. No wonder they kill more people in Africa than any other animal. It gave me great deal of respect for the natives poling along in their mokoros – dug out canoes that that don’t look all that stable.

We pulled alongside an 18-foot crocodile lazing at the edge of the water and as we watched him watching us, our driver mentioned in passing that it was the biggest croc he’d been this close to (were only six feet away). On a return visit, the croc had had his fill of tourists and slid into the water with hardly a ripple. Floating along the surface, eyes and the ridge of his back visible, he looked like a deadly zipper gliding along.

Having seen this silent killer in the water, we weren’t surprised by the skittishness of the impala, lined up at the edge of the river like a very nervous chorus line. Every movement or shadow on the river had them scurring inland, then hesitantly forward again to drink.

The bird life along the river was fantastic. Armed with assorted guidebooks, knowledgeable guide and driver, and telephoto lenses, we photographed an amazing display of plumage from carmine bee-eater with its crimson breast, to eagles by the dozens, cormorants, skimmers, storks, herons, egrets, etc. I checked off 47 species in the little pamphlet we were given the first day out – a drop in the bucket among the 500 living in Botswana.

When we were rough-housing as kids, my mother used tell us we sounded like a herd of elephants. I doubt she realized the compliment. The eles (pronounced Ellie) we encountered were quiet, regal and stately. They stand and sway a bit. Make an occasional "whoof" of air, a twitch of the tail or one of their enormous, almost translucent ears, which act as a cooling system. When they walk, it’s with a slow grace, though they can run at a good clip when necessary.

Our first encounter, however, wasn’t all that quiet. Our jeep inadvertently separated two halves of a migrating herd and one young fellow took exception to this state of affairs and headed toward us, trumpeting away. Fortunately, the matriarch put an end to that nonsense and the herd moved on, leaving me a little shaken.

Which meant, when our driver pulled into the middle of an elephant herd half an hour later and shut off the engine, I was a bit apprehensive. At 10 paces, these animals are very, very big. There were a few looks from the young males, a few feints, but it didn’t take long to realize no one was paying much attention to us and these quiet times just watching the elephants are one of my best memories of Chobe.

During the day, the eles (pronounced Ellie) travel inland considerable distances to find food, then in the evening, back to the river to drink and bathe. The elephants we spent time with were mostly breeding herds made up of females, immature males and babies. They have a matriarchal society and the babies are cared for by mothers, aunts, and older siblings. When we were there, there were dozens of babies from very tiny to half grown. The rule of thumb is if the baby ele can stand under the back end of mom, its under six months old. If it can stand under the front end of mom, its under a year. When the young males get old enough to notice the females, they are sent packing, and we would encounter solitary males now and again, or small packs of two or three.

The most noticeable feature of the herd is the affection. The older females let the little ones lean against a leg or a trunk, or they will reach out a trunk to touch them now and again. They are also incredibly protective, and at the first whiff of danger, the older eles they would surround the babies until you couldn’t even tell they were there.

The youngsters, on the other hand, are mischievous and just love to play. You’d think that something that weights several hundred pounds a birth wouldn’t be quite so playful, but these little kids liked to romp, splash in the water, roll in the dirt. During one afternoon drive, we watched three little ones wrestle in the dirt, having almost as much fun as we were.

The eles would linger on the beach, wading in the water, drinking, spraying their bodies with water, or just resting; then, as the sun began to set, there would be some unheard and unseen (to us) signal from the matriarch, they would head into the water at their slow pace. All you’d hear would be the slosh of water as they waded to one of the islands to graze. Now and again, you’d hear the deep, low growl they use to communicate, and I was told it could be heard up to 20 miles.

As the sky reddened, we would pull a Zambezi (local beer) out of the cooler and settle back to watch the animals silhouetted against the African sunset before heading back to the lodge.