Easter 2005: Botswana, Zambia and northern Namibia

Easter 2005: It was time for a longer trip through southern Africa again. Since we have seen quite a lot of Namibia already, we decided to first explore the neighbouring countries, namely Botswana and Zambia and come back to Windhoek via northern Namibia. Here are some pictures from the trip as well as a few explanations. Enjoy!

Here's a map of Namibia and our route:

After a long drive of about 850 km on the first drive we arrived in Maun, Botswana, from where we started on the next day into the Moremi National Park. We read beforehand that for the Moremi Park a 4 x 4 is necessary and we should experience soon that my car is definitely the right one to go on a trip like that. We had to use the four-wheel drive quite often, but never had serious problems anywhere although the road coniditons were rather challenging sometimes.

It was still the rainy season, which means the road is worse (and more fun to drive) and the animals harder to find than in the dry season. For sure, we did see a lot, but not the elephants and lions in abundance as we had hoped. The first night we stayed at Xakanaxa Camp Site and took a sunset boat tour to see some hippos and we were not disappointed. The second night we spent at the Kwai camp site. At night we could hear the lions, but unfortunately didn't see any although they must have been very close. In Moremi as well as Chobe National Park, the camp sites are not fenced, so you can expect various animals to walk though the camp at night.

From Moremi we went into Chobe National Park and shortly after the entrance to the park we saw our first elephants and our first (and last) lions, just next to the road, impressive! We stayed at Savute Camp Site, where some naughty baboons attacked us, and went on to the Chobe River Front. After another night of camping, we decided to stay at a lodge in Kasane and took a boat tour on the Chobe River, which was really rewarding. Besides the crocodiles, hippos, bushbocks and other antelopes, we saw at least 100 elephants coming to the river to drink or to take a swim. Very old ones, very small ones, familys, whatever you wanted. With the boat we were pretty close, but they didn't seem to be bothered by that.