Chobe National Park!

For our Christmas present this year we decided to go to Botswana on a day safari and forgo the gift exchange thing and boy was it worth it!! Our friend Katy from Bellingham was here and so we took this as an opportunity not to be missed (especially since we can't leave the country for the next two years due the adoption process)! On Wednesday we drove down to Livingstone and stayed the night in a pretty nice cheap hotel.

Thursday we woke early and hit the Zambia/Botswana border. There's a ton of sleazy dudes trying to sell you Botswana money to pay for your entry visa and trying to "help" you. But after running the gauntlet of bureaucracy and petty larceny we hopped a small boat across the border and were ushered through customs and immigration into Botswana. Let me say that we were not expecting a lot, some team mates had been there two weeks before and saw very few animals. But we were BLOWN AWAY! The first part of our safari was by river and we saw crocs, hippos, red lechwe, monitor lizards, elephants, and a thousand birds. Lucas got bored about halfway through and while we gawked at bull elephants locking trunks in battle just a dozen yards from our boat, Lucas was squishing ants that were snacking on the crumbs from tea time. The second half of the day was a jeep ride through Chobe National Park. We saw about a thousand impala, puku, kudu, elephants, lions, mongoose, baboons and giraffe. It was unbelievable. The lions were SO CLOSE! Having them strolling alongside our open jeep was a huge adrenaline rush, and we felt like we were gonna freak out. Luckily Lucas had fallen asleep and was unable to scream and cause a ruckus. I can't really put the whole thing into an easy little blog post, but let's just say I couldn't stop smiling for about an hour after we got back the hotel.