May 22, 2015

We have just arrived to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe after a pretty cool couple of days camping out in Chobe National Park in Botswana.

After we finished our time in the Okavango Delta, we had a long driving day up to the Northeast part of Botswana where Chobe National Park is located.  We had a bit of a stressful day before we went to the park because we are currently fighting with Amazon and UPS over a missing Kindle…Hayden’s Kindle broke the other week (fell face down on a rock…oops), but it has a 2 year replacement guarantee, so Amazon sent a new one to meet us in Zimbabwe.  This should have been great except that it was stopped at customers and Zimbabwe is saying that we owe $250 in fees/customs, but Amazon says it’s paid.  Unfortunately, we have been going back and forth, but no one wants to admit that it’s their fault.  So, for now, the Kindle is sitting in customs and it looks like we will be leaving Zimbabwe without it.  😦  booooooo

Luckily, the great couple of days in the park gave us something good to concentrate on other than the lost Kindle.  🙂  We got to the park for an afternoon drive where we saw a ton of elephants, lots of giraffes, hippos, cape buffalo, kudu, impala, warthogs, and even a couple of crocodiles.  It was pretty awesome that we saw a HUGE crocodile that was in the middle of eating a baby cape buffalo.  We were only a few feet away from him and he didn’t even move except to give us a little growl to let us know that we better not mess with his lunch!

After a couple hours of driving, we got to our camp that had been set up in the park.  It was a nice area where we even had a little porto-potty waiting for us.  We had a good dinner around the campfire and then settles down to go to bed.  It was a pretty noisy night for animals.  We heard elephants right near the camp and there were some lions that were eating nearby.  We also heard lots of hyenas during the night and two of them even broke into our camp and knocked over our pots and pans!

The next morning, we went on another game drive through the park.  We saw many of the same animals, but we also saw an elephant that had died the day before (of natural causes according to the guide) being eaten by scavengers.  It was a little gruesome to see, but I guess that’s the circle of life.

On our way out of the park, we also saw a bunch of warthogs, baboons, vervet monkeys, and some more hippos both in and out of the water.  It was a really cool place to see all of the animals because the park is along the river, so they are all in the area in the morning and afternoon to get water.

For the rest of the weekend, we will be relaxing in Victoria Falls until we take off with our group for the second half of the trip.