Safari!

"We may run, walk, stumble, drive, or fly, but let us never lose sight of the reason for the journey, or miss a chance to see a rainbow on the way."    -Gloria Gaither

Vultures

I have been spoiled yet again, by my stay at Ngala in 2009. To be able to off road while searching for the elusive animals one wishes to spot, it rather ruins the enjoyment of driving along a fairly well kept road in a National Park, where you are not allowed to, and have to take your chances at seeing anything at all! But, be that as it may, the area of Chobe National Park in Botswana that we visited, was beautiful, and although we didn’t spot to much in the way of those elusive ‘big 5’ we did see many wonderful sights along with a couple of animals I had not had the privilege of seeing before (although without the fabulous zoom on my camera, I may not have ‘seen’ these either); such as a crocodile, wild dog and hyena!

Patience my A**, I'm going to kill something!

you can barely see the hyena just coming from behind the bush, middle of the picture

wild dog

Croc

a couple of the many Baboons



ahhhh, let me guess.....



Impala?

Mongoose

Giant Stork

Tortoise

what and who are these guys?

most beautiful Fish Eagle

Guinea Fowl

For me, the most enjoyable part of the day was the boat trip along the Chobe River.

heading for the boat

It started with the sighting of a few water buffalo (with the honking of the nearby Hippos reminding us to keep a look out), to the sighting of an elephant, then two, then 10, then the banks seemed lined for miles with these huge pachyderms that came down to the river for their afternoon adulation's.

As we moved off, chugging past one of the many reed islands, Rachel happened to look behind the boat and let out a huge gasp; there, close behind us was a charging Hippo, mouth open, coming straight for us (so glad she had her camera in her hand!!!). To say my heart was in my mouth is an understatement; even the skipper let out a gasp and threw the throttle to full to pull away. He explained, after the excitement had died down, that they do not charge for long, it’s mostly for show ‘Get out of my patch”, but I wouldn’t have wanted it to be a closer encounter!

fishing with a net; not for me, with those Hippo's around!

After the boat ride, we headed back to the campsite, loaded up the gear and headed back to the border and the ferry. We learned a few days later, that Yuyi had driven us back in a vehicle that didn’t have brakes; Mercy me!