Botswana and Namibia are rich in wildlife of all kinds. Here is a mix of what we've seen.
Hippo skin is very sensitive to the sun. Therefore, they spend most of the time in the water. We were able to capture several shots with hippos on the shore. Here, you can see how large they are compared to their babies.
There are crocodiles hiding out all along the water's edge just waiting for an unsuspecting animal of any kind.
This monster of a croc was hanging out by the water on our way back from a morning water safari.
There are dozens of bird species in this part of the world. Here are some shots of just a few of what we saw.
This one is a fish eagle.
Here we caught a kingfisher along the banks of the Chobe.
We certainly lucked out when we saw this one! It's a lilac breasted roller. The colors are so dramatic!!!
And this one's called a yellow-billed stork.
This shot is little different. It's a termite hill. We saw them all over the Chobe National Park. Some are active, like this one, and others are dried up. Some get to be 9 meters high!
The safari land cruisers we were in were equipped with radios so the drivers could talk to each other about the animals they found. We were looking all over for lions and leopards, but were having no luck. Right before lunch we heard there was a female with four cubs about 25 yards off the road. We drove in and found them. This shot is of the mother laying on her back, partially hidden by the foliage.
We drove around to the other side and caught this shot of one of the cubs. The driver estimated his/her age at 3-4 months.
One late afternoon we came upon a herd of African buffalos.
We had a picnic lunch out by the shore of the Chobe river. The guides had to continually throw stones at the baboons to keep them away. They were in stealth mode that afternoon, because one woman turned her back for a second and a baboon swooped in and stole her apple.
Probably the most prevalent animal we saw was the impala. One time we saw a herd of maybe 100-200 animals all in one place.
These impalas are so regal looking with their horns!
We saw many giraffes in Chobe National Park.
Check out those lips!!!
After lunch we came upon a group of kudu eating off of some trees.
Kudu belong to the antelope family and are a little larger than the impalas.
Check out the horns on this male!
This is a black sable, from the horse family according to our guide. They are extremely rare, an endangered species.
As we headed back to the Zambezi Queen we were greeted by this sight!!!
