Safari Day to Botswana

Early to rise to meet the bus for our all day safari in Botswana at Chobe National Park. First we had to ride the bus 45 minutes to the border between Zambia and Botswana. Here we had to go through immigration office for stamping of the passports. Then, we met a boat to ferry us across the Zambezi River. On the other side of the river, we had to make another immigration stop and cross over the cleaning mat to clean off any "foot and mouth disease" we had carrying with us on our shoes. After arriving into Botswana, we went to the Chobe Safari Lodge where we boarded a cruise boat for a 2-hour river game cruise. We saw lots of birds, hippo, elephant, lechwe, one crocodile, and we even got to step into the country of Namibia while watching the cape buffalo. Niki was so excited from being in Namibia that she hit her head coming into the boat. Ouch! After everyone was sure Niki did not pass out or have a concusion, the cruise continued. After the cruise, we had lunch back at the Chobe Safari Lodge, and then it was off to the Park for the game drive. We were greeted by the baboons and impala. This is the time of year for impala (and all of the animals) to have their babies, and, boy, we saw lots of babies! We saw more elephants (and baby elephants), warthogs (and baby warthogs), sable, giraffe, and kudu. One exciting part of our game drive was seeing 2 elephants fighting, or at least, one defending his territory. After our game drive with our guide, Rambo, we returned to the ferry to cross back into Zambia. Because Mom and Dad had single entry visas into Zambia when they arrived on the 20th, they had to pay AGAIN for another single entry visa when coming back from Botswana. Dad thinks they should spend the extra visa money on fixing the roads! Our day ended about 6pm when we returned to the Zambezi Sun Hotel, just in time for the kids to take a quick swim before dinner. You can check out all our safari pictures in the previous blog on the slideshow.