From the delta we moved towards the top of Botswana where we made a stop at a campsite called Planet Baobab for the night. Now I don’t know what any of you know about baobab trees, but they are some of the biggest trees in the entire world. They can grow up to 30 meters high (about 98 ft) and 11 meters wide (36 ft). They have such wide bodies because this is where they store water in order to survive long periods of drought. These trees are often used as the home for many types of animals, and sometimes even humans. Some have, incredibly enough, been used to as the host of stores, prisons, or for bus storage. To give you all a picture that you would understand...picture the Tree of Life in Lion King. Okay, I think you all get the point: these trees are massive. Planet Baobab is the home of many such trees and we got to camp among all of them. It was very cool getting to pitch our tents beneath a massive tree that towered over the entire campsite. We enjoyed a great night of swimming, hanging out at the bar, and even laying on the hammocks that hung from the baobab branches. Things couldn’t get too crazy though, because we had an early morning wake up call (like every other morning of the trip) in order to leave for Chobe National Park.
When we got to Chobe at the top of Botswana, we once again pitched our tents quickly, so that we would be ready for our sunset cruise down the Chobe River which went down the side of the park. We spent the next couple of hours enjoying some drinks on the water as we alternated between watching the animals graze on the land and the sun setting in the distance. It was the perfect opportunity to socialize with one another and get to know the people on our trucks that are not a part of our program. We saw elephants, hippos, water buck, warthogs, buffalo, alligators, and many other animals as we rode the boat down the river. All in all it was a great cruise that was followed by a night playing games around the camp fire.
The next morning we were given the option of participating in a game drive through the national park. To be completely honest, this drive was close to being one of my least favorite parts of the trip until the very end. We had driven through the park, and because of the “no guarantees” motto that we were starting to really get the meaning of, we hadn’t seen too man exciting animals. Although it is the area with the highest concentration of elephants in the entire world, we didn’t see one for 90% o the ride. All we could see for the most part were thousands of impala, a type of antelope that we came to view as a glorified version of a deer. However, when I was about to fall asleep on our way back through the park, we ran into a group of elephants eating by the side of the road. Of course everyone stopped to take pictures in awe of our how close in proximity we were able to get to these wild animals.
We soon got ourselves in deep trouble as we found ourselves in between the father of the group and his child. Now to put the following story into perspective, the night before we had heard several short stories about tourist who got too close to wild elephants and ended up violently killed. Fortunately, elephants have a number of warning signs that they give before they plan to charge. These signs consist of shaking their ears/trunks, kicking the ground and stomping their feet, grunting loudly, throwing branches, and mock charges to warn the potential threat. I won’t get into the stories that we heard because of the time it would take and the brutality that they involve. Back to my story, once we saw the father elephant it started shaking its head frantically and making loud noises at our truck. It then kicked the ground from about 10 feet from our truck, just close enough for dust to fly into the open sides of the vehicle. After a couple of terrifying mock charges, it calmed down and walked slyly around a tree behind our truck in an attempt to trick us. This is where it got really interesting, especially for me as I was sitting in the last row, on the same side of the tree. He then started ripping down branches of the tree and throwing them in the direction of our truck. As he continued, I couldn’t help but think that these were all the signs, in the right order, that meant he was going to charge us. And I was right. He th in 10 years that our safari driver had seen, and the 1st out of those 7 in which no one had been killed. How about that for a wake up call to end our previously unsatisfying drive?
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