Annita having returned from a German guided Namibia Botswana Southern Circle NBag21 had the following to share with you...

After starting of with a bang at one of the seven natural wonders of the world, the Victoria falls that is one definitely knows it is going to be an awesome tour full of southern Africa’s highlights and to end the tour on a comparable not is something one can’t even begin to imagine, but as I discovered nothing  is impossible.

The Chobe being one of my personal favourites when it comes to national parks in Botswana due to its high concentration of African elephants and as a result the seemingly millions of antelope that seemingly follow in their wake and of course where there’s food they will be predators and not only limited to the land dwellers but the river predators more especially the 6m long ones that make women think of Handbags., Having a river that flows all year round with a substantial water volume to support loads of marine life and bird species as its northern  makes it easy to see why it is my first love when it comes to National parks.

As our last activity on our southern circle tour we do a slow relaxed boat cruise on the Chobe river and we were barely into the park when we saw our first elephant family group crossing the river to an island in the middle for better grazing,it was simply spectacular how once the elephants got to the deep parts of the river they used their trunks as snorkels  and some of the young ones showed off their swimming prowess but always under watchful eye of their older family members. we checked into the park and less than 10 metres from the park entrance we made a fantastic photo  stop with three bush giants fitting perfectly in one shot (two elephant bulls, hippo pod and buffalos) a few metres on the side lay a basking crocodile almost four metres long the sun was just right it was impressive we inched on a few kilometres further to more elephant family groups and a small elephant bachelor herd with the old bulls enjoying elephant retirement calmly and slowly enjoying some soft green and clean grass, which after uprooting from the sand with their trunks they washed and shook the sand of in the water there by protecting what probably was  their last set of  teeth.

Elephants are heavy feeders and they get only six set of teeth in their lifetime which last for an average of 10years per set and so in their old ripe age they prefer to feed o softer materials that do not do much damage to their teeth in a bid to avoid to avoid the imminence of death that comes naturally when they cannot eat and chew enough to sustain their large bodies.

We did not know where to point our cameras on the mainland banks was a lot of monkeying around from the ever entertaining baboons, impala  male also protecting their newly collected harems made for some good action shots. The birdlife i cannot do justice to if i tried to describe we so everything from the tiny malachite kingfisher the colourful little bee-eater and the bigger spur winged geese and marabous stocks, and the skilled antics of the fish eagles, kingfishers and African spoonbills no one in the boat could not believe how the time flew by which we noticed when the setting sun set the African skies ablaze and with a few dead trees in the foreground the setting was perfect for a good end to a great tour.