Bring on the elephants, it's safari day. For many, including us, the highlight of our trip.We started just after a substantial breakfast with a 45-minute drive out to the Botswana border on the Zambesi river. Over all that distance we saw nothing remotely resembling "civilisation". Just miles and miles of red earth and scrubby trees, without a wild animal insight. Not, we feared, the best start to a day of fauna-watching. We did, however, race by several traditional villages; clusters of thatched round huts with accompanying groups of goats, chickens, and the odd native trying to escape the heat of the morning in a puddle of shade.
That vision of a quiet, rural life evaporated immediately when we got to the border. It was a riot of people, traffic and colour. This is the major route between Zambia and Northern Botswana. There's only one ferry, which takes a maximum of two large trucks, so both sides of the border tailed back for miles with truckers. Sometimes they have to wait five days to get across. Thus it was no surprise, on a continent plagued with AIDS, to see massive bowls of free condoms on offer at the border station. Nor to see a little shanty town of tents spreading out from the border filled with basic shops, food stalls and a lot of women hanging around. The traffic delays had essentially created a rough and ready port town out here in the middle of nowhere.
Our brilliant tour operators had organised special passage for us. We made no attempt to bring our buses over; rather, we were fast tracked through passport control, then escorted to the riverbank where a fleet of excursion boats stood ready to bring us across. Traditional safari trucks awaited us on the other side. Three rows of seats, open at the sides but with a canvas top to try to keep off the blazing heat. I got to sit up front with our driver and guide, who was a cheerful and bright young man who seemed to know everything, and I mean absolutely everything, about this world. From the mating habits of elephants to Botswana's government to the effect of the Ma Ramotswe novels on tourism, he was a living encyclopedia.
The drive to Chobe National park took about 45 minutes, mostly over sand track. We saw a black sable antelope and a baboon on this part of the drive, but there wasn't too much out here. Primarily because there was no water in these grasslands and, as was soon to be proven to us, it's the water that draws the wildlife. Chobe, with its big, eponymous river flowing through it, is known as having some of the highest densities of wild animals of any game reserve in Africa, most especially elephants, and our reality certainly met that expectation.
We saw scores of the giants, some lumbering past just a few yards from the truck. There were many herds of impala, kudu and puku, all similar to deer. Warthogs were abundant, an animal so horrifically ugly that you start to think they're actually kind of cute. We saw water buffalo grazing in profusion on the riverbank, the outline of hippos in the water and all sorts of birds in the trees. The most spectacular was the lilac breasted roller, supposedly particularly beloved in Botswana because its vivid colours mimic the rainbow, and therefore promise rain. The most impressive sight was a leopard, crouched and alert for a kill. Unfortunately for our voyeurism, the herd of kudu he was stalking never got close enough for him to attack, so he eventually sloped off without a meal.
We were luckier carnivores, since our lunch at a magnificently appointed lodge on the river featured a buffet stocked with the meats we'd just seen rambling around the park in living form. I predict quite a stellar future for both warthog proscuitto and kudu fillet, if anyone can ever sort the import regulations.
After lunch we returned to the park for a river safari. Now we could get really close to those hippos and water buffalo, plus some frighteningly large crocodiles. The hippos may possibly have been my favourite animals of the day. They have real, quirky personality; adorable, placid and bovine when undisturbed, fast, angry and powerful, despite their huge bulks, when they are irritated. As they most certainly were when our boat drifted a bit close. I suspect the guides do this for effect, as there's a wicked glint in their eyes as they decide to share how these are the most dangerous animals in the park at exactly the time they're provoking one to snap its massive jaws at you.It was a blazingly hot day but being on the river, with a breeze and a roof and a very large cooler of beer, kept things mostly comfortable. By late afternoon we had returned to land, this time to a different luxury lodge and trays of cool drinks. We dabbled our feet in a riverside pool for a bit of cooling down. We were very dusty and tired by this point, but happy.
It was probably another two hours ... back over the sand tracks, through the border crossing, another 40 minutes on Zambian roads ... Before finally getting to the place where we were having dinner. We ate under a huge thatched pavilion, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The barbecue was good, but it was so hot I'm not sure we enjoyed it as much as we might. It was the entertainment that was the highlight. As the tables were cleared and torchlight cast dancing shadows around the pavilion, we listened to a magnificent story teller recount the adventures of Livingstone, and Stanley's search to find him.
Fortunately, "the middle of nowhere" turned out to be about 20 minutes from the hotel. So, although exhausted, I had just enough energy to take a quick dip in the pool when we got back. Washing away the heat and dust of the day, floating on my back while gazing at the vervet monkeys in the surrounding trees, bathed by the sent of night blooming jasmine cascading from giant urns of the plants on each corner of the pool. Yes, indeed. A fine end to a fine day.
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