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Chobe Park Day Trip from Victoria Falls

Kasane, North West, Botswana

The 4x4 we drove in

We saw many impala

Lunch at the Chobe Game Lodge

On our last day in Victoria Falls, we were scheduled to fly to the Okavango delta in Botswana from the Kasane airport. Our travel agent booked us on a half-day tour of Chobe Park in the morning. We were given the option of doing a land drive or a boat trip beforehand. We chose to do a land tour. Since we were departing Zimbabwe, we had to take all our luggage with us. This proved not to be a problem - we just kept it with us in the 4x4 during the whole tour.

We were picked up at our hotel the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge around 8am, along with another group who was doing the full-day tour. A tour bus transfered us to the Botswana border. The driver took our passports and gave them to the exit official at the Zimbabwe side (who seemed not to care - he barely looked at our passports). We then waited for our Botswana guides to arrive.

We split up with the other people on our bus who were doing a water tour in the morning. Our guide arrived after just a couple minutes, while the people of the group had to wait a bit longer. Our Botswana guide helped us through passport control and then drove us to Chobe Park.

We drove around Chobe Park for a couple hours and saw lots of impala, two lions, lots of giraffe, some hippos, and a few elephants. We had heard there were a lot of elephants in Chobe, but we only saw a couple. With such a short visit, we only got to see a very small portion of the park. The park regulations prevented us from driving off road, which limited our viewing. We found that the game viewing wasn't as good as at Sabi Sabi Bush Lodge. It also felt more crowded at Chobe as there were many private vehicles driving around too. Our driver provided us with some information about the park and animals, but wasn't as informative as other safari guides we've had.

After driving around for approximately two hours, we were taken to a hotel (Chobe Game Lodge) just outside the park for a buffet lunch. The buffet was not as large as it first appeared, but the food was decent. The view from the buffet was quite beautiful and overlooked the Chobe park. We had an hour there, and then our driver took us to the Kasane airport where he handed us off to another tour agent.

Cost

A group of 5 giraffe

We booked this tour through our travel agent, so I'm not sure how much it costs. It was also possible to book this tour through the activities desk at our hotel. There was a park entrance fee, but it was included in the cost of our tour and our guide paid.

If you take this tour from Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, you will need to pay an extra visa entry fee, which may be as high as $75 USD/person to re-enter Zimbabwe. We paid no visa fee to enter Botswana.

Estimated Time

Both half-day and full-day tours are available. On our half-day tour, we spent about 2 hours driving around in a 4x4 in Chobe park.