Evergreen Explorer Magazine

Africa's Great National Parks Chobe National Park Established: 1967 Size: 1.17 million hectares Where Located 100km west of Victoria Falls with quick and easy access, this truly authentic African National Park showcases a plethora of free-ranging 'unfenced' wildlife. The well-planned one-way road leads in to the national park allowing for easy game viewing and minimising crowding around big cat sightings. Landscape Apart from an incredible array of wildlife, the entire park is simply inspirational with panoramic, well-watered savannah grasslands covered with thorn bushes that can be viewed from lofty plateau look-out points. The People The original inhabitants of this area were the San Bushmen (AKA the Basarwa people in Botswana) who have a pale complexion and are small in stature. They call themselves 'The First People' with an ancient 'click' language and many traditional customs that have since been inherited by the marauding northern Bantu Tribes. These nomadic hunter-gatherers are constantly moving to source food, namely fruits, wild animals and water. You can even find San paintings inside the rocky hills of the park. The Wildlife Chobe is one of the great wildlife destinations, famed for having some of the world's largest herds of elephants and one of the largest continuous surviving elephant population. Elephant herds migrate to this area at certain times of the year consuming huge amounts of green fodder grass made available when the Zambezi and Chobe Rivers drop in flow volume. In addition to elephants, an abundance of animals and more than 440 recorded bird species call Chobe home. Watch out for Roan antelope and the rare Oribi antelope, Cape buffalo, hippopotamus, Plains zebra, waterbuck, impala, warthog, bushbuck and giraffe, just to name a few of the species found in the park. Lion and leopard sightings are also frequent. The Accommodation With Evergreen you'll stay at Elephant Valley Lodge, an authentic tented camp located in a forestry reserve adjacent to the park. With a waterhole and borehole overflow, it attracts many species of game and birdlife day and night, just beyond the camp fence. Chobe offers spectacular 4WD game drive and river cruise safari opportunities with sensational vistas filled with prolific non-stop wildlife and birdlife viewing. When you talk about classic African experiences most people immediately think about the incredible wildlife. There's no better place to spot them than in their world-class National Parks. We look at the top three - Chobe, Addo and Kruger - and chat to local guides Jeremy and Darryl to find out what makes them a must for any visitor to the region. Explorer Magazine | 2

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