TRAVEL: On safari in Botswana By Susan Henderson For You Magazine Published: 12:01 BST, 17 August 2024 | Updated: 12:01 BST, 17 August 2024 e-mail View comments Outline Botswana’s vast wildernesses make for exceptional big-game viewing and it’s home to the world’s largest elephant population. On the itinerary are three lodges, two Unesco World Heritage sites and dramatically different landscapes: Chobe National Park’s savannah in the north and the floodplains of the Okavango Delta to the west. Star line First check-in is at the Moorish-style Chobe Game Lodge by the Chobe River on the Namibia border.
This eco-certified grande dame of safari stops, where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton honeymooned second time around in 1975, last year marked 50 years of five-star hospitality, and its 44 comfy-colonial rooms ooze old-school elegance. Fast food: lions hunt their next meal. Feline No lie-ins here.
Snuggled in blankets, guests set off by jeep in the dawn chill with one of the Chobe Angels – as the all-female team of guides here are known – at the wheel. Being the only lodge inside Chobe National Park means a handy head start on other visitors and our reward is a rare front-row view of a lion pride tearing into its cape buffalo breakfast. Next up: six lionesses stalking a buffalo herd and taking down a straggler in a cloud of dust.
In quick succession we tick off nervy impalas, treetop-nibbling giraffes and an endearing warthog family snuffling around, oblivious to i.