Each trip we get one off day to choose an activity in the area we are staying. This year I was super pumped that J-Zone has a safari booking business where our off day activity still benefited the orphans. This is J-Zone’s primary means of fundraising for their daily budget. All 11 of us chose to go to Chobe, Botswana to tour the national park there. Chobe is on the other side of the Zambezi from Zambia. It is about an hour’s bus ride from Livingstone. It is home to one of the most beautiful national parks I have ever been to in The Chobe National Park. One site ranked it the number 15 park in all of Africa. Chobe is home to over 100,000 African elephants.
To access Botswana from Zambia one has to cross the Zambezi River. This can be a several day process for vehicles. We were fortunate to have transportation arranged on each side of the border. If you are crossing the border on foot, you can pile on the ferry with the other vehicles. If you are crossing via car, truck or trailer you have to wait your turn in line. They can only take one tractor trailer over the river at a time. We were told that some tractor trailers wait in line for a week to cross the border.
We went through the customs process with no problem. Lweendo who has worked in the safari tour booking business for years was there to make sure we made it across. When we crossed, Tony, our Botswana contact was there to make sure we were in good hands for the rest of the journey.
When we got on our ferry to cross the river it was surreal just to be sitting in the midst of the Zambezi, one of Africa’s most famous rivers. The Zambezi is the river that continues to run south and makes Victoria Falls in Livingstone. At one point when we were crossing we were in 4 countries at once: Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia. Rivers often serve as the boundaries for countries.
The Chobe River feeds into the Zambezi River at this point. We spent most of our day riding on the Chobe River. Majestic is the only word I can use to describe it. It is hard to imagine riding along in a boat and looking up to see 5 elephant crossing the river. .
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| Elephants crossing the Chobe River
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We saw more African wildlife than I could imagine. I crossed items off my bucket list that I didn’t even know where on it.
At one point we were chased by a male hippo. He and his female friends were swimming in the river. We came too close and he pursued us like a dolphin jumping up and down in the water and screaming like an unhappy pig. It was a little comical in retrospect, but it would not have been funny at all if he had caught us.
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| Mother Hippo and Baby in the Chobe River |
We couldn’t keep count of the number of hippos and crocodiles we saw in the river. It’s not somewhere that one needs a swimsuit.
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| Crocodile Resting On The Banks of the Chobe |
Early in the morning we saw an elephant that had been killed by 4 young male lions 4 days prior. It was mainly bones. The lions had just left their kill and what used to be an elephant was covered by buzzards.When we went back by the remains in the afternoon, there was nothing there but bones. The buzzards had picked it dry. The lions were down the river hidden in a bush. All you could see was their ears and the tail flapping at flies.
Majestic is the word of choice for this day. If you ever want to visit Africa and a mission trip isn’t your thing, but you want to see wild life. Please consider booking through African Christian Safaris. This is J-Zone’s tourism arm. They use this outreach to raise money for their work with the orphans. It’s their primary way to fundraise. They can book a helicopter tour of Victoria Falls, bungee jumping or one of the most beautiful safari’s you have ever been on. By the 11 of us choosing to do a safari on our off day, we were still able to minister to the orphans through the fundraising.
We went through the customs process with no problem. Lweendo who has worked in the safari tour booking business for years was there to make sure we made it across. When we crossed, Tony, our Botswana contact was there to make sure we were in good hands for the rest of the journey. 
