“Elizabeth Taylor stayed here”… and so did I!

New deck at Chobe Game Lodge, notice the king fisher on the corner

Sitting on a newly built deck on the edge of the Chobe River in a comfy low seated chair on a poofy cushion with my feet up on a foot stool, I can see all the Chobe National Park has to offer. In front of me I see warthogs, impala, puku (a rare antelope only found in the Chobe region), baboons, elephants, crocodiles, monitor lizards and an array of water birds to keep any birder happy (egrets, darters, fish eagles). Armed with my new Leica binoculars, that Paul bought me for my birthday and anniversary celebrations this year (they’re very nice binoculars), I could sit for hours just watching what happens to roam or fly in front of me. It is magical!

After a recent trip to the Chobe National Park I have a completely different impression of the park than I had in the past. Typically we drive into the park for a day trip and cruise around the breath-taking sights of the Chobe River front but we are always on the move. I’ve never actually stayed in the park and doing so left me with a completely different impression of the peacefulness of the place.

Peaceable kingdom - warthog, impala and puku

Heron, darter and monitor lizard (on log to left)

We were invited up to help map some of the new, and more remote, areas of the Chobe National Park as the part of a new park management plan. For years the riverfront has been congested by the ever growing number of tour operators who want to show their clients the “best” views. At times, on previous trips to the park, it has felt like a traffic jam of safari vehicles…not so much fun. So we are very much in support of efforts to reduce the congestion by making alternative routes to other areas of the park. The Wildlife Department has put in four new water holes and a road system is developing around them that needed to be mapped. We literally drive with our GPS, gather the data and Paul “makes” the map when we get back to the office (using GIS – geographic information systems). At one of these new water holes, we saw an amazing collection for elephants and sable in the middle of the day (beautiful dark brown antelopes with crescent shaped antlers).

Bedroom Chobe Game Lodge

While we had originally assumed (or at least I had assumed) we would be camping for three nights while mapping, we actually ended up staying at Chobe Game Lodge  – one of the premier safari lodges in Botswana and the only one located within Chobe national park (all the other lodges in the area are in Kasane, the town that borders the park).

We were treated to three nights of luxury, as Paul is friends with the owner, who he was doing the mapping for. The lodge is done in a North African style (it looks more like Morocco than Botswana) with guestrooms housed in buildings with a series of arches with lovely dark wood furniture and elaborate decorative materials throughout. Our room included a comfy king size bed (that you had to have a running start to get up into) and a lovely veranda that overlooked the Chobe River.

Veranda, Chobe Game Lodge

View from veranda, Chobe Game Lodge

And as you might have guessed from the title of this blog, Elizabeth Taylor did stay here once when she married Richard Burton (maybe for the second time?). I would highly recommend it as a honeymoon spot…if you can afford it (this time of year it is over $1000/person/night!). 

Dinner included a delicious buffet that was situated in a slightly different venue each night: one night in the main restaurant area, another out in the open patio area by the warm light of multiple candelabras on each table, and for our final night we were seated on a grassy “boma” area right on the riverfront. A boma is a traditional space where people gather for a braai (what we would call a “cook out” or barbeque). We ate under the stars to the sound of marimbas and singing by locals. It was stunning!

On our final evening while driving back to the lodge at sunset, we encountered a breeding herd of elephants and had the most amazing close encounter. Turning off our engine we simply sat and watched as young elephants kicked around in the water while others gave themselves dirt baths, rolling around like small kids at play. Positioned on the track between the river and a cluster of bushes and a fallen tree, to pass us the elephants had to go up over the tree limb (often scratching themselves along the way – each foot one-by-one, rear end, their trunk) and come right by my window. At one point, a young female was close enough to touch had I simply reached out the window. She seemed as curious about me as I was about her as our eyes met and she slowly walked by. It was an amazing experience. Sometimes it’s good to be the mapmaker’s wife!