25th - Chobe National Park

One of my favourite animals! The warthogs graze in the hotel yard each afternoon

On to Chobe!

Wilder still hadn't organised anything so decided to accompany us to Kasane, the entry point for the national park. Again faced with free time after our flight that morning, and following our early nights and mornings in the Delta, we decided to relax and have a few drinks at the cute little bar, right on the Chobe river.  ok so a 'few' drinks turned into more than a few, and a very late night, and we felt a little the worse for wear after waking at 5:30am for our first game drive in the park! Definitely worth it though; after our guide told us that early mornings are the best time to see cats, we turned the corner and there was a leopard! ( It walked right by us, but I was too slow to get a good pic and it was still pretty dark for photos). We saw tonnes of other animals too – elephants, giraffes, buffalo, kudu, impala, baboons, hippos and crocodiles, all well used to cars to very easy to spot. Also first time sighting lions up close - REALLY close, so beautiful!

Enjoying the sun, like all cats!

Only slight downer was that the huge number of cars and the animals' lack of concern with all the cars took away from the 'wild' feel of the park somewhat!

Back to our hotel to catch up on some sleep, and then went for a lovely cruise on the river to see more wildlife, and watch the sun set. Loads more ellies and hippos; first time we could see the hippos fairly close as they were all quite hidden in the delta (though we could always hear them close by!).  At one point we saw a huge fish eagle struggling in the water and we thought it must be caught in something. As we got closer we could see it had a fish in its claws that must have weighed as much as the eagle itself, so it was flapping its wings 'swimming' to the shore laboriously with its catch! It battled on and made it to the shore finally, only to have an opportunistic croc dart out of the water and snatch the fish away. Poor eagle, we were so sad for it! Our guide was quite excited and said he's never seen them drag a fish along like that.

Tomorrow on to Vic Falls!