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Into Botswana and Chobe National Park
Having read that Botswana is very strict on the movement of meat and dairy products in to the country we probably shouldn't have crossed the border from Namibia with 5 packets of bacon, a litre of milk, 3 packs of cheese and several yoghurts.
Making no attempt to hide the food, it wasn't long before the inspector found the items. We declined the option of cooking the bacon and eating the cheese and told her to take it all.
Angela then mentioned this was our home and we were travelling for two years on a tight budget looking forward to Botswana etc etc (I was wiping the tears from my eyes listening) and next thing we were told to hide everything in the bottom of the fridge and carry on through.
No one else inspected our rig and within 10 minutes we were in Botswana, driving through Chobe National Park towards the town of Kasane on the Chobe River. Chobe is famous for huge herds of elephants and it wasn't long before we had to stop to let matriarch led family groups cross the road. Not being sure of the Highway code in Botswana I felt it was best to give them right of way!
Kasane has the air of a frontier town, not surprisingly as Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe all meet at a river boundary close by. We intended to stay at Chobe Safari Lodge campsite but with no brakes on the trailer the pitches, sloping down towards a crocodile and hippo infested riverfront, looked a bit challenging! We opted for the flat campground of Toro Lodge, 5km south of Kasane.
A footnote on Chobe Safari Lodge is that it was the first in the area, opened in the 1950s. The information boards in the lodge recount how Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands came on safari in the early 1970s, in his capacity of President of WWF. He came with cameras and guns and shot several antelope that he'd not been able to shoot before. When asked by a reporter if shooting antelope conflicted with his presidency of a wildlife protection organisation he responded by asking if they had a more intelligent question to ask him! The good old days!!!!!!
We enjoyed several game drives in to Chobe (at US$ 53 per day we were not going to spend weeks here like Kruger or Etosha, sadly). The park is wall-to-wall elephant, especially later in the winter (August/Sept) when the lack of rain forces all the animals to drink at the river. Given that much of the road is 4x4 sand tracks it is interesting driving, with beautiful riverene forests and the added tension of bumping in to irate herds of pachyderms protecting their young!
We drove cautiously and managed to avoid getting in to any tricky situations, despite the difficulty of spotting elephants in the thick bush either side of the road, it never ceases to amaze us that creatures so large can melt in to the bush in seconds!
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