From the island to Camp Chobe

From the island to Camp Chobe

Day 9: 25 December

Our Christmas day started very early with breakfast at 6:00 and departure at 6:30. It was refreshing to get up when the morning mist still drifts over the water and various birds start calling. I was glad to capture the magical awakening of nature on my camera - a true dreamscape.

Dream sunrise

We left the island by boat, climbed onto the Jeeps and drove 45min through the park to our bus, and then drove onto the Mafwe living museum.

Mafwe woman

There we saw a display and live performance from the villagers depicting their life style, building of traps, hunting, jewellery making, food preparation. What a nice way to remember their culture and heritage, all under the huge baobab trees.
From there on we drove to Katima Mulilo to buy a quick lunch snack and continued southwards to Camp Chobe. 

Chobe tented camp

Camp Chobe is a tented camp with luxury tents on a timber stilt structure, directly on the banks of the Chobe River and looking straight into the hillside of Botswana. I could watch the elephants grazing leisurely, an open billed stork in the tree right in front of the tent entrance - ahh peace :-) this is a bird watchers & photographers heaven.

The lodges' guides took us on a game drive and again we were fortunate to see many elephants, giraffes, buffalo's, African fish eagles, egrets, storks, grey go-away birds.

Open-billed stork

Elephants from Chobe Park

For this special day the staff prepared a special Christmas dinner: upside-down tomato and onion quiche, turkey roast and pork roast, roasted salted potatoes, braised carrots and baby marrows, and to top it lemon meringue with red berries. Wow! (ok so Christmas is no time to diet, and I thoroughly enjoy being spoiled by the very competent chefs at every lodge)

View over the Chobe River

We retired early after this eventful day, and could hear the elephants grazing nearby (very nearby), and even distant lion roars intercepted the evening concert of bullfrogs, leapfrogs and cicads. Yes this is truly Africa:-)

Kilometres driven: 260km