A big attraction of going to Imbabala Zambezi Safari Lodge is its proximity to Chobe National Park in Botswana, which has probably the largest concentration of elephant anywhere in Africa. Imbabala offer a day-trip into the Chobe, which takes you across the Kazungula border post (which is very tourist friendly), and into the national park. The morning is spent on a three hour river cruise, which leaves from the lovely Mowane Lodge near Kasane. A good lunch is eaten on the lodge’s patio, followed by a game drive in the afternoon. After that, it’s back to Imbabala by about 4pm.
It’s worth doing, based on what we saw. Elephants (Loxodonta africana) are everywhere – and even in summer time, when the rain is plentiful, they come down to drink at the river. People start joking that there are so many elephant that they get bored of them after a while. It’s a pachyderm paradise.
What makes the Chobe special is the large floodplains which border the river…and give great viewing of the animals. There are other floodplains on the Zambezi in this area, but they don’t seem to be as big or as common.
I wonder if it’s got to do with the “back-flow” of the Chobe river during peak rainy season. Amazingly, the Chobe River flows upstream when the Zambezi River is at peak flow. This is because there is so much water pushing down the Zambezi, that where the tributary of the Chobe flows into it, the sheer volume and pressure of water in the Zambezi pushes the waters of the Chobe back upstream. It indicates just how powerful the 2 700km Zambezi is as a river…because the Chobe is a pretty big river in its own right. I understand that there is 5000 cubic metres of water flowing over the Victoria Falls every second during peak flow season in April. I believe that’s 5000 tons of water per second, which is a serious amount of weight pushing back on the Chobe’s waters.
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