Chobe is the largest national park in Zimbabwe, home to 30k elephants, countless hippos, crocs, lions, leopards … you know, the usual.

We got up at 5:30, got dressed, grabbed a coffee and met Kitty, Matt and Kat at the Land Cruiser. Roads in Chobe are very bumpy and sandy, so we enjoyed a “Botswana massage” while we scanned for leopards. Didn’t see any, but saw tons of other beautiful wildlife on the way.

We were working our way West in the park, and when we dropped down to the river, we were watching Cape buffalo crossing the river to Zambia when we saw this group under a bush.

A young male sauntered in and said hi to his mom.

In person, this pride of mom, 2 adolescent male Cubs and an adolescent female were just incredibly beautiful. We sat watching them, and the Buffalo, getting closer together – and hoping for some action.

Mom got very attentive, started fixating on prey – even told her Cubs to go hide at one point.

Then she disappeared too. We eventually “timed out” and in all likelihood the herd was too strong to deal with. Cape Buffalo are mean boogers, and there were plenty bulls protecting the calves.

Found a place for a coffee and made friends with some baboons and starlings.

Headed back to the lodge for our Covid tests, which were efficiently handled and cost about $150USD, then went for a lovely lunch and some photo processing, then we met for game drive #2, this time in an all electric land cruiser, which was really cool. Kitty headed us east through the park, then dropped to the river to return along the bank.

Tons of amazing wildlife watching, including coming across elephant babies doing elephant spa (get coated in mud, the dust with sand, to keep the sun and bugs off). The babies got stuck frequently and had to be helped out by the grown ups.

We came across another snoozy pride of lions under a bush, then later a single but very very large and strong female – we think the same one that chased the giraffe last night. Amusingly, the same giraffe came out of the forest nearby, so it looked as though there might be a repeat performance.

From there we climbed up from the river bank, got stuck in the sand briefly, then had a snack in the bush (G&T). Here’s to new friends 🙂 Also made friends with a striped mongoose.

Back to camp to clean up for dinner, another round of drinks with M&K, then off to a stunning dinner on the deck overlooking the river. What’s that rustling? Baboon or lioness? Nope, it was Kat delivering two flutes of champagne to our table.

Dinner was amazing, a bunch of Africa inspired fusion dishes, and as it drew to a close the staff came out and sang to us for our anniversary. It was completely magical and moving.

With full tummies and full hearts we headed back to our room to zzzz and get ready for the 0600 dawn river tour.