Pangolin Better Wildlife Photography Course on the Chobe River

The next stop was Kasane, Botswana for the 5 day/4 night Better Wildlife Photography course with Pangolin Photo Safaris.  Our group of 8 had 9 outings on their custom built photo boat and 1 game drive, all within the Chobe National Park.  The park sits in the north of Botswana and at 4,500 square miles it is surprisingly only the 3rd largest in the country.  The Chobe river is in the northeast corner of the park and provides a natural border between Botswana and Namibia.   At this time of year (dry season) there is an abundance of wildlife at the river; the photo boat along with Charl’s excellent instruction and guidance and Shuur’s outstanding spotting abilities allowed for some amazing photographic opportunities.

The Chobe River is beautiful, especially in the calmness and serenity of the early morning

As beautiful as mornings were, the sunsets never failed to impress.

The Chobe Riverfront during the dry season is home to ridiculous numbers of elephants of all sizes.  These African Elephants can live up to 70 years old and are the largest living land mammals.  And when you see one up close, all you can say is “wow”.

The African Buffalo (or Cape Buffalo) also exist in very large numbers and are seemingly undisturbed by the “tourists” photographing them.

It is said that there are over 400 species of birds in the Chobe;  I certainly didn’t see all of them, but I was amazed at the variety of bird life and photographed a lot of them.  Here are some of my favourites…

AFRICAN SPOONBILLS

The Lilac-Breasted Roller is probably the prettiest of all the birds, and they like to pose!

THE AFRICAN DARTER

We were lucky that Shuur spotted this little guy on our last morning; apparently they aren’t seen very often.

4 Little Bee Eaters, cuddled together trying to stay warm in the early morning

There are a lot of Impala (an antelope species) in Chobe; these ones were all black & white…

In the Chobe there are a lot of Hippos as well; often out of the water.

On our last afternoon we did a game drive into the Park; our first time away from the river.  We were treated to an up close encounter with a beautiful lady…

Our last evening after dinner with the Pangolin crew, we headed out to do some star photography.