Botswana

From Victoria Falls, located in Zimbabwe, we drove across the border to Batswana… The borders in this area are demarcated by rivers. The Zambezi is the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia…When we drove into Batswana, the Chobe River was the border of Batswana and Namibia.  Our destination was Chobe National Park, the second largest national park in Botswana. Like our Denali, all its territory is accessed by one road. If one has a good SUV, it can be driven into the park and they have some camping with permits…Chobe has the largest elephant concentrations in Africa…Chobe also has a water path…The boats have to stop and pay entrance fees like the Land Rovers do…The draws here are hippos, crocs, lots of birds, and animals grazing in the wetlands… We spent most of our time on the river, but the elephant herds WERE amazing.

I assumed Botwana would be more prosperous than Zimbabwe. And the border crossing was the first time on the trip that I really felt we were in the Third World. The road at the borders was lined with trucks trying to enter…Lots of potholes, to the point where our driver kept switching sides to miss them. This settled down once we left the border behind. The lodges in Botswana were less upscale… I gave up trying to get things like an ice bucket. BUT, Chobe is a must see destination. The river is wide and shallow, allowing huge numbers of hippos to thrive along its wetlands. The Chobe flows into the Zambezi upstream of Victoria Falls…

Hope you like the intro pictures