Chobe National Park Things to Do

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We saw some very interesting birds during our stay in Chobe National Park, particularly along the Chobe River and its banks. Birds in Chobe include spoonbills, hornbills, rollers, and herons. Many visitors to Chobe are so focused on elephants and the rest of the Big Five that they don't focus on the park's many interesting bird species. They are missing some of Chobe's most interesting wildlife. Fortunately, we had a birding book, which helped us figure out which species we were seeing.

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As part of our visit to Chobe National Park, we took a 3-hour boat tour along the Chobe River. Our tour went along the Chobe River, ending at the hobe Lodge for lunch. We had a guide who constantly pointed out riverside wildlife, which included hippos, crocs, elephants, monitor lizards, and antelopes. We also saw plenty of interesting birds, including spoonbills and rollers.

The boat on our tour was very comfortable, with two deck levels, a lower level for those that didn't want to get sunburned, combined with an upper deck for those who wanted a better view. Our boat also had plenty of snacks and drinks to tide us over to the next meal.

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Chobe National Park is most famous for its huge numbers of elephants. In fact, Chobe, has more elephants than any other place in the world, with tens of thousands of them roaming throughout its territory. If you take an overland tour of Chobe, you can't help but see dozens of elephants. They love to congregate along the waterfronts, where they drink and cool themselves off. What we particularly liked about Chobe was that we were able to see entire families of elephants together, including plenty of babies and juveniles. Seeing entire families of elephants together is an amazing sight.

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The Chobe National Park is the second largest national park in Botswana, and has a large number of wild animals.
The park is divided into four areas: Serondela with dense forests in the Chobe River area in the north-east, Savuti in the west about 50 km north of Mababe gate, Linyanti in the north-west and Hinterland in between.

The road from Ngoma border to Kasane pass through Serondela area. All cars are required to check in and pay the park fees for Chobe National Park, unless proceeding on the road to Ngoma/Kasane.

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There are a lot of baboons along the Ngoma-Kasane road. One of the baboons tried to hide behind a tree. See the funny picture... The other baboon crossed the road. Two safari cars with tourists are seen in the background.

This park has many thousands of wonderful elephants, you can really spend some time watching them,
Remember elephants are DANGEROUS WILD animals so please do not get out of car to take better pics, they do sometimes come close as you can see here....if they do come real close, just keep dead quiet and you will get some marvelous pics...
As you can see he is drinking water BUT.... keeping his eye on ME

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The basics of game drives: to view the wildlife, you will be in open sided vehicles for several hours. Therefore, be prepared. This may include rain gear, camera equipment, sun screen, or whatever else you may need to keep you comfortable.

Now, here is a very odd part of the game drives here: due to high-end European tourist influence, I found that it is very common for the game drives to come equipped with "refreshments" for their guests. This may include wine or other such beverages, or in fine British tradition, tea. Some snacks are provided as well.

Don't get impatient: the baboons crossed the road directly in front of us, giving us great photos. The previous load of tourists got impatient and demanded their guide leave in search of other animals to watch.

Don't do anything stupid: if a lion is less than 10 feet from you, don't stick your hand out and announce yourself as being food.

Animals are more lively in the cool part of the day, so game drives do tend to get started early in the morning because that is the nature of the hunt. Bring camera equipment that is good in dim lighting (high speed film, or digital equipment that can deal with low level light without using the flash). Even if it were OK to use a flash (and hitting an elephant with a camera flash early in the morning can have...results that are bad for you) you would never get the flash to reach the distances you would need to have them reach. See the Game Drive photo on my Chobe home page for an example of typical conditions.

If you don't see anything, don't be surprised. Animals are unpredictable. Sometimes they can't be found.

Lastly: Don't be disappointed when your photos don't do justice to the wildlife. No matter how good you are, it just can't all be captured - on film or digital.

The boat trips may be short or long, depending on who you go with, what sort of mood they are in, and how much you paid for your trip.

The trip I took left from the Chobe Game Lodge, which is already located in the national park.

Unfortunately, November is the very start of the wet season in Chobe. During the dry season, the animals become somewhat thick along the northern edge of the park, as many of the water holes have dried up and so they move to the river to find a place to drink.

During the wet season, the water holes inland are filling or full, and thus the animals move inland in order to find fresh grazing grounds or establish mating territories.

Hippos, elephants, and various and many types of birds were primarily what we saw. Furthermore, the elephants were preparing for migration inland, and thus were forming a very large migration herd in a large, flat, treeless plain right next to the river.

Wild animals are, by nature, unpredictable, and so there is no way to tell what you will see and what you won't see. Some people have apparently come to Chobe and been very disappointed, while others have come away very impressed with what they saw.