The lodge is situated in the most north-easterly corner of the 4,517 sq. mile Chobe National Park on the banks of the Chobe River with a view is of the vast Caprivi floodplains. Not too far away, the four corners of Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia meet. To the east, the mighty Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe; in the distant north, the vast wilderness of Zambia; in the southwest, the savanna lands of the desert of Botswana.
The source of the Chobe River is the highlands of Angola. There is a bridge that crosses Zambia between and Botswana. Namibia and Zimbabwe did not want to participate, but it has been a great source of allowing commerce for the two countries.
The Chobe National Park is home to more than 45,000 elephants, not to mention the lion, cape buffalo, leopard, many unusual bird species and antelope.
In 1975, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton wed for the second time at Chobe Game Lodge.
In an effort to empower women, this lodge has only female guides. They felt that they were good drivers! Our guide, Ori, was with us throughout, either as a driver of land rovers or solar powered boats.
Chobe Game Lodge has the distinction of an Ecotourism site. However, we felt that our previous three camps with Natural Selection were more eco-friendly in some ways, with reusable water bottles and paper bag trash liners. We had pump mosquito spray in the rooms and jeeps and in the room at those lodges. At night, we had mosquito nets.
At Chobe, there were plastic water bottles or canned water (!?) and plastic trash liners. The only mosquito spray was an aerosol can that was provided by our guide in the vehicle. There was no mosquito net at bedtime. The irony is that the only place that we saw any mosquitos was at Chobe.
Electric boats are used for cruising on the Chobe River which is the main channel in this area. (However, our boat needed new battery cells installed so they were using gas power.)
The Chobe River has Botswana on one side and Namibia on the other. On the Namibia side, the communal lands are used for fishing and raising livestock. They are not a national park. However, the lions and elephants cross over from Botswana. Namibians are vigilant and shoot a gun in the air to frighten the lions back to the park. Elephants come and go and are fun to watch as they swim across the river.
Of the five rivers in the Okavango Delta, the Chobe River is the only one to reach the Indian Ocean. All others disappear in the sand of the desert.
We see many birds when we are on the Chobe River.
In the Chobe National Park, safari vehicles are required to stay on the established “roads”.
Our animal adventures are winding down. We have come to recognize many animals and birds. However, we are starting to see many ALTs which are “animal looking things”!! It’s a real term, and it is like a mirage. Every log looks like an antelope. I gesture to the group only to be embarrassed. This happened many times. One time the opposite happened. I saw a steenbok and thought that it was a log!!
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