Day 4 – Elephant Sands to Kasane – Chobe Safari Lodge

Nile Crocodile; no we did not feed Sinead to it

Lovely Kudu

 I have read a number of write ups on Hunters Road that runs along the Botswana/Zimbabwe Border, Hwange National Park, and on checking with Ben who runs Elephant Sands he told me to do it because they were shortly going to declare a Trans-frontier Park, ban hunting along the border, which has a number of hunting concessions at present and you will only get access on an officially sanctioned tour aimed primarily at Photographic Safari’s. We were advised not to take the first turning at the Vet Check Point, but go to the 102km peg and turn off, which we duly did although there were no sign posts.

Some 5kms down this road heading East and we came across what appeared to be a river bed that would be impossible to navigate in the rainy season, we go into low range and crawl along in deep sand at about 10kph for at least 10kms, we had learnt a lot from our sand experience yesterday and although the going was slow we were not getting stuck. The sad part is we saw no game, plenty of dung, but no owners.

Nearly two hours later and we turn into a camp where the two occupants Blue and Sipho tell us that we look lost, we ask them where we are and they tell us we have come into a hunting concession and the owners were out with a bunch of Americans hunting Elephant. The ladies use their toilet facility and we get directions to Pandametenga, they also tell us that in the rainy season the place is teeming with game, but the roads are bad when wet, I wanted to tell them they are not too good when it is dry. We can say “We have been there done it” as far as Hunters Road goes.

We reach Kazangula and Kasane at 14h30 and the girls decide they have to have a shower and wash their hair, whilst I entertain Sinead. We book for Dinner and enjoy a veritable feast, the lodge is close to a 5 star, but Claudia ended up in a bunk bed and they managed to find Sinead a camping cot, which she is used to at home and we wished we had brought that with as opposed to the carrier.

We see more game in the lodge grounds than we have all day, wart hogs, vervet monkey’s, which could be termed a pest, warning signs for crocodiles and hippo’s, but that could be just tourist talk, nevertheless we are very wary when walking the grounds at night.  

Denise and I shop for something suitable for lunch the next day at Choppies Spar right next door to the lodge.

We are again exhausted and are in bed by 21h00, tomorrow we will visit the Chobe National Park.