One of the most sought after destinations in Botswana is the Chobe National Park. You will see an amazing wildlife spectacle, including many thousands of Elephant on your Chobe Safari.
Chobe National Park, Botswana's first National Park, is in the North East of Botswana and covers around 11, 700km square of the Northern Kalahari. Most of the park consists of impenetrable thorn bush that grows in deep sand.
Chobe National Park is the third largest park in Botswana after the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and the Gemsbok National Park and has one of the largest game concentrations in Africa.
The Park is famous for its huge herds of Elephants and Buffalo as well as large prides of Lion, as well as for its fascinating rivers such as a river that flows in both directions and for the Savuti Channel that disappears and reappears every so many years.
The Savuti Channel stopped flowing in 1981 and only started flowing again in 2008. No one can predict when the Channel will stop flowing or start flowing again. These changes are thought to be due to shifts in the Earth's surface that redirects the flow of water.
Chobe National Park is one of the world's last remaining true wilderness areas and one of Africa's greatest game parks. Chobe is no doubt one of the most spectacular and diverse of Botswana's wilderness areas, even more so than the celebrated Okavango Delta.
The original inhabitants of Chobe National Park were the San Bushmen (also known as the Basarwa people in Botswana). To this day you can still find San Bushmen paintings in the rocky hills of the Park. Chobe became popular with European hunters in the mid 19th century and many of them came to hunt game.
Wildlife had been hunted by the indigenous peoples for many thousands of years prior to white man's arrival. However the white trophy hunters had an added advantage with their firearms and soon the wildlife populations in the region were in decline.
In order to barter European goods such as tobacco, clothes, blankets and more guns, the locals were encouraged to shoot far more wildlife then they actually needed. This added even more pressure on the wildlife.
The Chobe Game Reserve was proclaimed by the colonial Bechuanaland Government in 1961 to control the widespread hunting and logging in the area. The park first opened to the public in August 1964 and it was upgraded to national park status in 1968 after Botswana's independence.
Chobe can be divided into four main regions: The Chobe riverfront, the Savute marsh, the Linyanti swamps, and dry hinterland in between them all.
