Thebe River Safari Camp, Kasane

The campsite that we are staying at do their own park and river tours so we boarded our Landrover Safari truck at 5.45am for an early morning game drive through Chobe Natural Park.

Chobe National Park in northern Botswana , has one of the largest concentrations of game in Africa. By size it is the third largest park in the country at 11700 sq kms and is the most biologically diverse.The park is widely known for its spectacular elephant population. It contains approx 45000 kalahari elephants ( the largest in the elephant family ) of the approx 80000 elephants in Botswana .

 On the way to the park entrance a large continent of elephants were crossing the road

After letting them pass we were at the entrance, we only had one other person on our safari viewing Toyota  so lots of room to be able to get good views on both sides of the vehicle as there are 3 rows of 3 seats.

Went down to the riverbank drive to see zebra,hippos,elephants,Impala , marabou stork,croc,buzzards,white crested fish eagle, stripped  mongoose to name a few.

Then up  into the bush lands in search of lions, buffalo to only come across some buffalo in about an hours driving. We did spot some lion paw prints though

On the way back one of the other tours spotted some lions so the track became peak hour traffic jam with the result being the lions bolted out of site

Then back along the top riverbank road to see giraffe feeding on the salt on the grass in the marshlands 

Back home for breekie about 9.30 before heading into town to have a look at a baobab tree at the police station that Jo had read about and a quick drop into the shops .

The baobab tree is also known as the tree of life as it is capable of providing shelter,food and water for the animal and human inhabitants of the Africian Savannah regions. It's cork like bark can be used for cloth and rope, the leaves for condiment and the fruit eaten.

The historic Kasane baobab tree played a major role in the administration of justice,distribution of mail and layout recruitments in northern Botswana . It was used as a goal before the advent of modern prisons in the area.

Back home for a late lunch about 2pm and then depart for the river cruise at 2.45pm up the Chobe River for a game cruise so packed the esky and we were off to travel 4 kms to the launch jetty.A bird had caught lunch just as we were about to set off

We thought we were on the wrong boat when we got there as there was whole bunch of other tourists- what happened to our private tours!!

This crowd was from Nomad Overlanders so would also be staying at our camp ground- mostly German and Brits.

We didn't go far before we encounted hundreds of elephants along the shore line drinking,having a mud bath or swimming

We hadn't  seen many hippos up close and out of the water as they spend most the the daylight hours in the water keeping cool however there was lots along the marshland feeding on the grass which was really good.

it was a  excellent 3 hours mostly viewing the elephants and hippos before redocking at 7 pm just after sunset 9 which was much of a sunset

A short drive home for a hot shower and charcoal BBQ eye fillet steak and salad for dinner followed by a tropical rain shower to cool everything down.

Also had a bit of time to search for a map to see what distance we had covered so far..so one depicts our trip so far very well from Nairobi, Kenya to Chobe River,Botswana