When we found out we had to be awake and ready for a morning safari game drive, the reaction was bittersweet. What better way to begin a day then with a glorious sunrise in one of Botswana most beautiful and animal plenty National Parks? However that would be mean getting up from sleep around a time that would equate to something like 11 pm back home – talk about travel woes! I can’t complain for real though – let’s be realistic this is AWESOME!
Anyways, we get up at 4:45AM here and walk down and do a quick thirty minutes session of Yoga by the pool side over looking the Chobe River. Adam was absolutely hilarious here – by far the least flexible person of life - self-acclaimed, so no hard feelings ;) – decided that he wanted to participate. It was a great way to start the day, get some exercise, some laughs and then finish it off with a refreshing dip in the 70 degree pool!
We met at 5:45 out front of the resort and loaded into open safari vehicles – basically padded benches on the back of an open pick up truck with a metal and tarp roof overhead. We gladly cozied up to each other and wrapped ourselves in the woven blankets provided. In case you didn’t know, Botswana is in its Winter season now and traditionally gets down to 5 degrees, and many times even below freezing – how is that for breaking stereotypes?
The sun was not yet up and there was little light in the sky. The game drive started out with a short drive to the national park. We were told to remain in the truck at all times and to be quiet and not frighten the animals. I am so worked up. This time we were so much closer to the ground, to the wild. No longer would we be a comfortable distance away on a large floating boat…we were going to be right there with the animals! (wait to see the pictures and videos!)
Amazingly this time we didn’t see any elephants up close! We wove our way around the park and ended up seeing water buffalo, giraffes, lots of birds (including the ‘heaviest flight bird’ in the world, which is the name our guide gave it, haha!), warthogs, impala, kudu, steenbok and more! During this excursion we got to witness our first GORGEOUS African sunrise – it only lasts around a minute, but it is a beautiful thing to watch – it is also the only real source of heat, and so was quite welcomed! We took a break part way through the morning and swapped stories with the other safari vehicles around. We got to drink the wonderfully plenty and popular Rubios tea (spelling way off…?). It seems like our guide had down the best job and that some of the other people were frustrated (though that might have been because instead of taking photographs they are taking ‘snapshots’, hahaha)
What we were really hoping for was lions though – come on, who wouldn’t be! So as we were packing back in for the second half and our guide started chatting on the radio that distinctively said “lions” somewhere in there, we were excited! We started winding our way back to the roadway when we came upon two female lions – they were just walking and lazing in the sun and grass! They were a decent distance from the roadway and hard to spot, but it was really cool to finally see a lion in the wild! Little did we know that just a little way further next to the main roadway we would find a carcass with three lions feeding off of it! We got some really cool pictures of these mother lions devouring a young water buffalo! It was a truly amazing sight! We must have been less than ten meters from them, but they were totally un-phased and only really focused on eating! To say the least, the early wake up was well worth while!
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