We climbed aboard a typical safari truck with three sets of bench seats in back and headed to the land safari that went along the same stretch of the river that we had floated that morning. Chobe National Park does not have a fence around its boundaries, and so the animals cross out of the park and into the nearby village and road quite often – there was plenty of elephant dung on the road to prove it. On the land safari we first came to a mud hole with maybe three herds of elephants using it in turns. Again, watching the babies roll in it was amazing, and also seeing the teenage males play fight and test their strength. What was most amazing was how close they got to us! We were literally 5 feet away from them at times. According to our guide, Chobe does not have a problem with aggressive elephants, and they tended to be very comfortable with the vehicles (all of the animals were) because there was very little poaching and no culling of elephants. Parks in which they’ve had to round up and cull elephants due to overpopulation (which is now a problem at this park) has lead to extremely aggressive behavior among the elephants and it is impossible to get close.
We also saw a black-backed jackal, wart hogs, a sable antelope, a cool dung beetle rolling a massive ball of dung in the sand and a number of impala. We then left and began our circuit of the park. I was extremely excited to see a number of giraffe, who would just slowly amble past right in front of us. The rest of our drive was full of elephants, which were still really fun to see. Everyone was disappointed we didn’t see the pack of lions that cover this area – they were seen on the opposite side about 35km from us that today. Despite no lions, I was thrilled with the whole experience.
It really can’t get better than a river and land safari in one day. And I didn’t even have to wear khakis and a fly fishing-type vest with tons of pockets! We were driven in the safari truck back to the border, where we went through emigration, then to the river where we crossed again in the motorboat, then through immigration back into Zambia, then onto our tour bus for the hour trip back to Livingstone.
Having had such a perfect day, I decided to take myself out of the hotel for a nice dinner. I decided to go to a place called “Oceans Basket”, as I had been told it had good seafood. I put on a dress, got in a taxi, and when we pulled up the place was dark save some candles. I had to ask the taxi driver where the entrance was. It didn’t dawn on me until the taxi had left and I was walking into the restaurant that the electricity was out not only in the restaurant but in the shopping mall it was located. No matter, so I sat down at a table outside for a romantic dinner-for-one by candlelight (the mosquitoes were very insistent on joining me). I figured, “it’s not Africa if there aren’t power outages.” So I had some wine and a nice fish and calamari combo. The electricity returned half way through my meal, and I learned that, in fact, this restaurant was a chain originally from South Africa and owned by Greeks.
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