May 26, 2015

Following our weekend at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, we came back into Botswana to spend another night at Chobe National Park and boy are we glad that we did!!!

It was a quick drive across the border and back into the park. We saw quite a few giraffe, kudu, and tons of elephants before we got to the highlight of the trip so far…a lion pride (along with 4 cubs) eating an elephant that had died a few days before. We have seen a few lions in other parks, but nothing like this. There were six adult lions and 4 cubs that we could see. We know that there was a dominant male in the area as well, but we didn’t get a chance to see him. We spent at about an hour sitting right next to the lions while they were eating, playing and relaxing. It was really amazing. To see them in the zoo is pretty cool, but right next to the vehicle, in the wild was absolutely unbelievable. I took at least 400 pictures, but here are a few of the really good ones.

We got up early the next morning so that we could go back and see the lions again, we were hoping to see the male, but he was just behind a bush out of sight, so we could hear him, but we didn’t see him. The lions were still eating from the elephant and the cubs were still playing…it was really awesome.

As we were leaving the park, we were about 1 km from the exit when our driver spotted a Leopard; the last of the Big 5 that we were missing. We’re pretty excited to be able to say that we have seen the Big 5 and we still have almost three weeks left to go! Our next mission is to see a baby of each of the Big 5…so far we have seen baby elephants, lion cubs, and baby buffalo. We are keeping our eyes open for baby rhino and baby leopard cubs from now on.

We left the park and started to make our way to Zambia for the next part of our trip. Unfortunately, I’m not a fan of the Zambian government right now…when we came into Zimbabwe, they told us to buy a UniVisa (multiple entries to Zimbabwe and Zambia) for $50 to save the extra money at the Zambian border. Well, we came out of Zimbabwe and spent the night in Botswana before we came to Zambia, so they said that it voided our Visas!!! We had to pay another $50 to get in again. The bright side was that Hayden was free since he’s a minor, but we were still out $100…dang it.

We spend the next 4 nights at various parks here in Zambia before we continue on to Malawi and into East Africa.