The first glimpse of the river, deep and dazzling in the sandy terrain, is forever surprising. It looks like a peacock blue ribbon, a swathe of bright, weaving its way within the small town of Kasane, and following wilderness, the Chobe National Park. Unquestionably, one of Africa’s most beautiful rivers, the Chobe supports diversity and concentration of wildlife unequaled anywhere else in the country.
Opened in 1968, the park covers approximately 11 700 Square Kms, comprising woodland, floodplains, and swamps. The northern boundary is formed by the Chobe River. The park contains four distinct geographical areas: the Chobe Riverfront, Savute and Linyanti, the Ngwezumba pans.
Chobe Riverfront being the most accessible and frequently visited of Botswana’s big game country, it is most known for its vast herds of Cape buffalo and elephants, which converge upon the river to drink during the dry winter months.
During this season, you may see numbers of elephants at once. You may be circled by elephants, as the main Serondella road becomes impassable and scores of family herds cross the main street to reach to the river to drink, play, and bathe. While driving on the river’s edge, you can detect up to 15 various species of animals, such as lechwe, waterbuck, puku (only visible in this part of Botswana), roan and sable, giraffe, kudu, impala, bushbuck, warthog, monkeys and baboons, along with the accompanying predators’ lion, leopard, hyena and jackal.
If you take a river cruise, you’ll get up close and personal with hippo, crocodile and an array of water birds. You’ll discover the park, and the beings, from a different point of view. More than 460 varieties of birds have been identified in the park, making the park one of the most valued bird Safaris in Africa. Average kinds to be seen include the spur-winged Gees, the sacred ibis, Egyptian Gees, the ubiquitous cormorants and darters, Pel’s Fishing Owl, Carmine Bee-eaters, most members of the kingfisher family, all the rollers, the unmistakable Fish Eagle and many members of the stork.
The Chobe River rises in the northern Angola highlands, travels enormous distance before it reaches Botswana at Ngoma. Like the Okavango and Zambezi River, the Chobe’s course is affected by faults lines that are extensions Great Rift Valley.
Ngwenzumba Pans
The Ngwenzumba pans lie approximately 70 kms south of the Chobe River and comprise a large complex of clay pans, surrounded by mopane woodlands and grasslands plains.
When the rainy season comes, the pas fill with water, the wildlife that move apart from the constant water origins of the Linyanti and Chobe Rivers.
Lesoma Memorial Monument
The brutal civil war in the Rhodesia spilled over into Botswana, in 1977. In the process, 15 Botswana Defense Force soldiers died; however, the accident only strengthened Botswana’s national resolve to remain a peace loving nation.
Savute
Truly at the interior of the park, Savute boasts most of the Chobe species, except for river antelopes. It is quite known for its predators, especially lions, cheetah and hyena, that have large populations.
The Savute channel flows from the Linyanti River for about 100b kilometres, carrying away water from the river and delivering it into a large swampland named the Savute Marsh, and far south onto the Mababe Depression, which is also supplied by the Ngwenamba River from the northeast. The Mbabe-immense and flat and fringed by thickets of trees-was once part of the Makgadigadi supper-lake full of water, it becomes the venue for many of migratory birds and animals, particularly large herds of Zebra.
Geographically Savute is an area of many curiosities. One of its greatest mysteries is the Savute channel itself. In past 100 years, It has suddenly dehydrated up and refilled its waters many times.
This unique water flow shows how the many lifeless trees that line along the channel grown several times when the channel was dry and drowned when the channel moved again.