Where Elephants Rule

Our next destination Botswana, we headed off into elephant country! Botswana is famous for having an abundance of elephants, and after crossing the border it wasn’t long before we stopped the truck to let a small family of them cross the road.

Our campsite that night was a place called Elephant Sands. Under the banner on the doorway read the slogan “Where Elephants Rule”… The campsite was literally in the wild, i.e. there were no fences or walls; it was basically just a bit of sand beside the road that you could come and pay to camp on. It was equipped with showers, taps and even a swimming pool, but for some reason they all ran with salt water. Once we had set up camp, the reason for the slogan soon became clear… There were trees that had been stripped of all their leaves, some trees that had been totally uprooted, and an old shower block that had been knocked down… We asked the owner why it was so chaotic and apparently elephants regularly walk through the campsite. During mating season, the males feel the need to practice head-butting things and so take out their pent up aggression on whatever is closest: trees, buildings, tents… It was slightly disconcerting that night, knowing that at any point an angry herd of elephants could rampage through and tear us all limb from limb! But thankfully none did, and we set off again bright and early in the morning.

Our next stop was on the banks of the River Chobe at Chobe National Park. That night we embarked on a sunset river cruise down the river. I say “cruise”, it was more of a floating tin boat that crammed in about 10 of us, all sitting very tightly. We saw lots of beautiful animals come down at sunset to drink from the river. Families of Hippos wallowed in the mud whilst crocodiles prowled around menacingly on the bank. A highlight was watching a family of elephants cross the river. There were five of them in total, two of which were tiny babies, only a few weeks old we were told. They lined up in single file with the biggest at the front, then the smallest, then the second biggest, then second smallest and so on. They crossed with the little ones holding on to their parents tails so they didn’t get lost in the water. At times, all you could see was a baby trunk poking out the water as the entire rest of their body was submerged. They safely reached the other side then slowly loped off as elephants do, seemingly unaware of us and the other few boats that had been watching their crossing with delight.

The next notable tale was the border crossing to get into Zambia. When someone mentions “border control” to me, I usually think of walking off a plane, waiting in line then nervously watching the grumpy man/woman stamp your passport and sometimes ask you random questions about how long you are staying in the country etc. Not in Zambia. To get into the country, you are required to cross the Chobe River on a ferry. We sorted out our passports etc, then proceeded to the “dock”. The ferry was a small boat, however there is a huge range of trucks, cars and people all waiting to cross at the same time. It is basically just a total rammy to see who can get on the boat first before it gets full. We piled on on foot, whilst our driver skillfully maneuvered the bus to the front of the queue and somehow got on without a problem. After that it was chaos – people running around everywhere trying to get on, cars/lorries beeping and chickens and various animals squawking and running around. Aside from this, guys in canoes were unofficially loading bottle upon bottle of vodka onto their canoe and furiously paddling them across. We can only suspect that they had paid off the customs man as it certainly didn’t look very legal. We got off on the other side and got back on the bus, just in time to see the whole process start again.