Oh the places we will go

(Part one of four)

The town of Victoria Falls is the perfect place for adventure-thrill seekers and luckily the weekends at Nakavango are free for the volunteers to do as they wish. All one has to do is pick between one of a million different activities and let the lovely Justine (with Nakavango) know, she sets the whole thing up using a company called Adventure Zone. All that’s left is to show up at the appointed location and time. Could not be easier. As I was only in Zimbabwe for two weeks, I had two full weekends that I was determined to fill with amazing adventures.

And that I did…

I arrived at the game reserve on a Wednesday. When you spend 24/7 with a small group of people, you make friends quickly. So luckily by Thursday when we had to let Justine know what programs we would like to do (over the weekend), I was already part of the group therefore had friends to do the activities with.

On Saturday I went with four of the boys, Alex, Owen, Lance and Arnaud, to Chobe National Park in Botswana. The Chobe National Park is almost 11,000 square kilometers. That makes the little 30 square kilometers game reserve (which is 6,000 acres!) I was staying in feel like child’s play.

We were picked up early in the morning at the reserve and taken to the border of Zimbabwe and Botswana, about an hour drive, where we had to go through customs and cross the border. On the Botswana side we were picked up by a woman who drove us to the place where we would be starting our day with a river cruise along the Chobe river.

We arrived at a pleasant, pretty little restaurant over looking the river where we were given a simple but tasty breakfast of fruit, muffins & scones and tea. One thing I’ve taken away from my time in Africa is how friendly and accommodating the people are. The breakfast was included in our package and you could go back for seconds, or if you are a 20 something year old growing boy, thirds. Eventually even the very patient and lovely Botswanan behind the counter was clearly not pleased with how many times the boys got up for more food.

Finally we were asked to board the river boat, probably because the boys ate all the food. As we were walking along the dock to the boat we saw two elephants grazing in the tall, tall grasses on the shoreline. Already a great start to the morning but not too shocking as Chobe National Park has the largest concentration of elephant in Africa. Our little crew headed to the top deck of the double decker river cruiser and off we went.

I wish I was a better writer so I could properly describe how beautiful the day was. We were so lucky with a perfectly cloudless sky, shining sun and a glorious cool breeze. It could not have been a more perfect day. As we slowly made our way along the river banks I just tried to soak in as much of the beauty as I could into my memory bank, how clean the air smelled and how nice the breeze felt on my skin.

As we rode along the Chobe river, Botswana was to our left and Namibia to our right. All we could see of Namibia was miles and miles of flat, bright green grassland, with the lone tree here and there spotting the horizon. The color of the grass seemed unnatural. It was so bright it was almost neon. The colors, the sun, the water, the breeze, the sounds of the animals will be forever engrained in my memory as one of the most joyful moments of my life.

  

Along the Botswana coast were trees with the most gnarly, twisted and crazy roots plunging into the river. There were also what appeared to be thousands of impala, so many of the small, beautiful African antelope. But as we got up river, the trees gave way to more of a beach with marshy grassland and that’s when we started seeing some of the bigger wildlife.

There was a sole young, male elephant along the coast just hanging out. Up in the distance we could see another single elephant walking towards the same direction. Our young male was clearly excited (if you get my drift) at spotting a fellow elephant and he started walking that way. If you are ever going to see a large elephant penis it should be in the presence of 20 something year old boys. The comments, laughter and jealousy were enough to have my hand on my forehead, hanging my head in shame, embarrassment and amusement.

 

Soon though the young male’s excitement quickly receded as he realized the elephant coming towards him was in fact another male. And a big one at that. The captain stopped the boat so we could watch the interaction for a bit. It was clear the young male wanted company but he kept a healthy distance from the big bull. They both drank from the river and the young male slowly made his way into the water and fed off the grass. But when the big bull started walking away, the young male cautiously followed along.

 

There were 24 people on the boat plus the captain and a guide. Twelve downstairs and twelve upstairs, six on each side to balance out the boat so we didn’t tip over… That was a detail I decided not to spend a lot of time worrying about as we cruised along crocodile and hippo infested waters. Hippos can be pretty shy. They don’t like a lot of noise and will hide under water if a boat approaches.

When the captain spotted a rather large family of hippos in the water on the edge of marshy grassland, he asked everyone to be quiet as we approached. One of the fanny pack wearing, white zinc nosed, flap hatted tourists (no joke) must not have heard what the captain said as he loudly yelled “WHAT?!” And promptly our hippo family sank under the water. Sometimes you really just want to slap a person and ask them “how can you possibly be so stupid?”

We did eventually see plenty of hippos. They are so huge and fat and awesome looking. They also account for the most human deaths of any animal in Africa. They may be shy in terms of not putting themselves on display, but if you get between a hippo and the water, you are toast.

  

The most interesting encounter happened when we spotted two African buffalo chilling in a mud pit. They were so relaxed and looked like they were there for the long haul. Meanwhile, a big bull elephant had spotted that same mud pit and was fairly quickly making his way to it. He got right up to the mud pit, stopped and stared at the buffalo. Then he slowly started inching forward into the mud pit. Both the buffalo got up and one turned to start walking away but the other one faced the elephant head on. We sat there watching as both animals had a stare down, wondering if we were about to witness a NatGeo worthy moment, until finally the elephant conceded and walked away. The buffalo won that round! I never would have guessed.

     

Our river cruise ended with lunch at a lodge on the water. After lunch we were picked up at the lodge by our safari guide in the typical open jeep style cruiser to start the second part of the day, a safari game drive in the national park.

As soon as we got into the park we rounded a bend and surprised a large male elephant. He put his ears up and looked like he was going to come at us. For a split second I got nervous, but then he went along his way like nothing happened. Luckily it was long enough to get a great frontal shot of him.

We made our way down to the rivers edge (which we had just done by boat) to get a different view. As always we saw tons of impala, baboon and warthogs (Pumbaa!). As it was early afternoon and getting hotter, this time we also saw huge herds of elephant making their way to the water. It’s just so neat watching these gray, beautiful giants graze, play and just be.

After driving along the water some we headed into the park. Along the way we had to stop more than once for an elephant herd crossing. I was secretly hoping one of them would just walk right up to the cruiser…to do what I’m not sure. I guess I just wanted a cool “close encounters!” type story.

 

We saw kudu, giraffe and all sorts of birds but suddenly our guide really started picking up the pace. We were working against the clock because he had to have us back at the Zimbabwe border by 4:30pm but we felt like we still had plenty of time and there was no need to rush so much. We were all silently getting a little frustrated at his speed and finally I asked him to please stop as we wanted to admire some guinea foul. So he stopped and we all took pictures and took in the scenery then he slammed on the gas again.

I was just starting to get really annoyed when he suddenly slowed down and we saw two SUVs up ahead parked just slightly off the road. They had spotted something and clearly our guide had gotten word. I had in fact heard a lot of commotion over the walkie talkie radio but obviously couldn’t understand a word of it.

Turns out he was speeding us through the park to get to a pair of potential mating lions! I say potential for a reason, I’ll get to that. Imagine the scene: a lioness lying on her side with her leg up in the air and a lion licking her paw. We were all silly with happiness. LIONS! I mean, he’s the king of the jungle! The animal I most wanted to see! Realistically I knew there may not be a great chance of seeing them so I hadn’t kept my hopes up. It’s like all my dreams of Africa came true in that moment!

So back to the “potential” mates… We watched them for probably a full 10 minutes. All three cars sat silently filming and capturing pictures just waiting for something, anything, to happen. The lion licked the lioness’s paw for a few minutes, then she rolled over on her belly and laid beside him as they both watched us watching them.

  

Then after a few more minutes he slowly got up, stretched, looked around and started circling her. We were are all thinking “oh my gosh we are going to get our NatGeo moment and see these lions mate!” But just as the lion got behind the lioness and started slowly lowering himself towards her, she snapped her head around and gave out such a threatening roar that it sent that lion jumping back two feet. And I, along with every single person in the cruiser, wanted to kick ourselves for not getting her roar on video! Some things are the same no matter what species, eh? The woman always calls the shots. The poor dejected male stood staring at her for a bit until he finally gave up and plopped down in a heap next to her.

After that we really were late on time, so we gladly let our guide take us zooming at top possible speed through the rest of the park, only to stop once briefly for another elephant crossing, some giraffe sightings and a silly baboon playing with himself. The guide drove us to customs at the Zimbabwe border and I think happily said goodbye to our group of misfits.

And so ended my happy, happy day at Chobe National Park. Little did I know of the many more happy moments to come…