Spring break was awesome! We got back on Monday and I have spent much of this week catching up on school so I haven't really had time to post. Anyway, our time in Zambia and Botswana was so great I am going to have to break it up in two posts.
After Arriving in Livingstone, Zambia and spending Friday through Sunday there, we took a taxi to the Botswanan border and ferried across for around 30 cents. After a brief ferry ride across the boarder we taxied to the Kasane airport in North Eastern Botswana. We boarded a 70 seater Air Botswana plane with no more than 20 people on it including the 5 of us and the flight crew. The hour long flight took us from Kasane to Maun where we were picked up by a tour company called Delta Rain and taken to their campsite/backpacker lodge.
At the ferry boardering Zambia/Botswana there were smugglers taking 2L coke bottles filled with gas back to Zambia. Our taxi driver told us authorities just turned a blind eye and took a nice tax for every load they took over. There was all kinds of corruption at this boarder including the fact that the government won't build a bridge to gap the river so that bribes from trucking companies would still be paid. The ferry was basically a barge that fit 1 semi-truck, another pick up truck and however many passengers could fit. There was a line-up of over 300 semi-trucks on the Zambian side, so officials on the Zambian side were probably making some nice money off of the bottleneck.
Once at the Lodge just outside of Maun we chilled by the pool for the afternoon (Sunday) and went to bed early. The next day (Monday) we woke up early and were driven out of Maun and along one of the fingers of the Okavango Delta until we reached the meeting point for our Mokoro Polers. The Delta is obviously a protected area so the least harmful/best way to get around is by mokoro, a 15-20 foot long dug out canoe (some made of fiberglass these days) driven by a local guide with a 15 foot long pole to propel the mokoro by pushing off the bottom. That day we took a relaxing mokoro ride into the Delta towards our campsite for the next two nights stopping to check out an Elephant on one of the many islands of the Delta. When our guide used the word Delta he would draw out the EL sound to the point where every time I type it it is hard not to write Deeeelta.
Anyway, once we made it to our campsite we spent the day swimming, napping, going for an uneventful evening game walk and talking to our guides about the plan for our stay in the Delta. It was around 90 degrees during the day so cooling off in a nearby watering hole was key to survival.
Tuesday morning we woke up with the sun and went for a mokoro ride to Chief's Island, the major island in the Delta where the majority of animals reside. On the walk we saw springbok, red lychwe deer, warthog, baboons, many birds, hippos, and all kinds of animal tracks, kills, and poop. We once again spent the day trying to stay cool and in the evening went for a sunset mokoro ride in search of hippos. We ended up seeing a couple hippos and were sure to keep our distance so that we didn't become another one of the stories the polers told us about.
On Wednesday morning we woke up for morning game walk, returned to camp, packed our gear and departed for another relaxing mokoro ride back out of the Delta. Wednesday we went to town briefly, hung by the pool and went to bed early due to exhaustion and the ridiculous sleepiness that 1 beer causes after a long day of traveling. On Thursday we flew back from Maun to Kasane and took a taxi to a backpackers lodge on the Chobe river. We checked in hung by the pool, and at around 4:00 pm jumped on a safari vehicle which took us to our Chobe sunset cruise.
The section of the Chobe river that we toured was the most densely packed natural collection of animal life I have ever seen. We saw probably 10 species of deer, tons of birds, crocidiles, hippos, elephants, giraffe, water buffalo, monitor lizards, monkeys etc. Below is a video of where we landed the boat to check out the elephants munching on some reeds in the afternoon sun.
Definitely got uncomfortably close to this croc, I was sitting in the front of the boat which was almost on top of him, 5-10 feet away.
Pretty much everywhere you turned there was some group of animals either close by or in the distance.
Too many baby/mama animal pics for this blog but I think this was one of the better ones.
On Friday morning we went on another game drive in the Chobe National Park early in the morning, hung by the pool, and had lunch at the lodge. When it was time to head back to Zambia, we went to the front desk of the Lodge to call a taxi. When we got there they told us the phones weren't working so we decided to hitch hike. After no more than 3 or 4 cars passed by, a guy pulled over and told us he was heading to the boarder as well, and could easily give us a ride. We got in and started talking to him. He had a Tupac chain hanging from the rear view mirror, he was bumping Tupac the whole way to the boarder, we soon found out he had recently named his son Tupac and the conversation the entire way to the boarder was about the life and death of the godfather of thuglife. Needless to say Botswana treated us very well with an very wide spectrum of experiences.