After our quick visit to the stunning Victoria Falls, we made our way back to Botswana and the safari hub town of Kasane in northeastern corner of Botswana en route to the Chobe National Park Riverfront section:
For my long-time blog followers, you may recall that I posted an entry in 2023 on my visit to Kasane with Nancy, Mark and Kirsten. Here’s a link to that post in case you are interested in a brief description of Kasane:
overlandwithkmcgee.com/june-26-27-kasane/
Prior to entering Chobe, we spent a few nights in the border town of Kasane located on the Chobe River in the northeast corner of Botswana and the border with Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe (the only place in the world where 4 countries touch) and, of course, adjacent to Chobe National Park’s Serondela (or Riverfront) area. Kasane is the northern gateway to Chobe NP (and visits to Victoria Falls in neighboring Zimbabwe), and essentially a safari gateway town. We spent 3 relaxing nights at Chobe River Cottages in a 2-bedroom cottage and did some exceptional birding in a local community-owned nature park that closed down during Covid and is now in a state of complete disrepair. This is really unfortunate, as the Park has the very best location on the Kasane area Chobe Riverfront, with a large hill overlooking the extensive Chobe River rapids that create a patchwork of islands and channels that host huge nesting and roosting colonies of Openbills (storks), Storks (yellow-billed), Cormorants, Herons and Egrets. Covid exerted a huge toll on the tourist industry in Africa, and this place was just one of the many victims:
In addition to the birding and resupply operations, we also took the obligatory sunset cruise on the Chobe River. Sitting high up on the upper deck of the passenger catamaran afforded us spectacular views of the river and floodplain marshes and grasslands, which were covered with hundreds of elephants in addition to buffalo, hippos, crocs, and many other creatures, not to mention all the water birds. The Chobe River floodplains are famous for the concentration of animals, especially elephants, that feed on the lush grasses and riparian vegetation during the dry season when water is limited elsewhere. Here are some photos from our sunset cruise:
Ok, we are off to Serondela, or the Chobe Riverfront, for 2 nights and then on to the remote Savuti section of Chobe. You may not hear from me for 11 or 12 days, depending on service availability.