Our first day on safari, we spent cruising up and down the Chobe River but the next morning, I went on my first official morning game drive. We had a 4:30 wake up call (earliest wake up call during our entire trip) and after some coffee, we were on the road by 5:30. The morning was fairly quiet, especially compared to the late lion sighting we saw the evening prior but after a short while, we started spotting some wildlife.

Baboons, we saw lots of baboons. They were everywhere that morning in Chobe National Park. Like I mentioned in my last post, we were in Africa during “green season” or also known as the rainy season. It’s when the weather is hot but also rainy and makes the landscape green and lush. With the vibrant and full vegetation, comes all the babies! A lot of animals give birth during this time so their young ones will have plenty of food and water nearby and also the thick greenery offer great protection from predators. During the drive (and during our trip), we saw lots of babies animals and it was absolutely adorable. Technically, high season for African safaris is during their winter months because of the lack of rain and the scarcity of water. Because of this, large number of animals can be easily seen at the limited watering holes in the national park. While I would love to witness hundreds of elephant and buffaloes surround a single watering hole, I love the fact that I got to see so many baby animals during my trip.      

Our morning was filled with baboons, jackals, warthogs, giraffes and so many impalas. Impalas are known as the “McDonald’s of the national park”… because they are everywhere. I laughed when our driver told us this. Even though we did eventually see a lion towards the end of our drive, the highlight of the morning drive for me was the tower of giraffes we saw. They were just minding their own business, eating their breakfast, making their way from one side of the road to the other, even crossing right in front of our vehicle. Giraffes are such cool and unique animals and some of my best photographs during our trip (in my opinion), are of these beautiful animals. They are so crazy tall but oddly enough, when they run, it looks incredibly graceful. Giraffes are amazing, nuff said. 

Like I mentioned earlier, we saw our only lion of the day towards the end of our drive. We were actually heading back to the lodge when we saw a lone lioness in a field. She looked bloody probably from another lion or a resilient prey. Lionesses are usually not by themselves so seeing this one alone was odd. Hopefully she made it back to her pride okay.

We ended our drive with an adorable family of mongooses. Mongooses are little badasses. They look super cute but don’t let that cuteness fool you. These guys are snake killers, venomous ones too. They are resistant or immune to snake venom and are known for killing cobras. There are a lot of very poisonous snakes in Africa so these little guys can eat as many of them as they want!

After our drive, we headed back to the lodge and had brunch. This would end our time at Chobe Game Lodge and we were off to our next camp, Chobe Chilwero Lodge. If you read my itinerary post, you know that we were coming and going the entire trip. It was sad to leave such a beautiful lodge, but I was excited to see what else Chobe had to offer.