A baptism by river, but in a good way. We were barely settled into our seats on the photo boat and still busy locking our cameras onto the in-built tripods, when we suddenly found ourselves, lens to trunk, photographing a line of elephants crossing the mighty Chobe river; their big grey backs tar-black and shining following the dunking.

They’d embarked on this skinny dip just a stone’s throw from our houseboat and the spot we’d be moored that night. It’s a popular crossing point for pachyderms and despite the clear enjoyment all but the smallest and most nervous of the elephants displayed, this magical wild swimming session had a distinct purpose. Behind them lay the Chobe national park with sparse nutrition on offer at this stage of the dry season. Ahead – the lush green expanse of the Chobe floodplain.

As we marvelled at the mammoth synchronised swimmers, our guide held the boat firm against the bank, anticipating correctly the spot right by us they’d pick to haul out with trunks and tails swinging. We swiftly switched to wider lenses.

This was to be just the first of several magical elephant crossings we were fortunate enough to photograph on this trip, but there wasn’t time to sit back and soak in the experience because the elephants suddenly began dusting themselves, energetically flinging clods of dry earth high over their heads. We simply had to keep photographing…

Next morning, we turned our attention to some of Chobe’s smaller, but no less enthralling species. The river richly rewards when it comes to birdlife, but the mornings lend themselves particularly to the pursuit. We kicked off photographing a yellow-billed stork roost on a fast-flowing section of the river where the sky was filled with the wingbeats of waterbirds. Part way through we got sidetracked when our guide spotted a pair of normally shy giant kingfishers posing nicely in the open. What a contrast with the miniature version, the pocket-sized malachite kingfishers that we photographed soon after, before spending the rest of the session along a tranquil backwater focusing attention on displaying skimmers; hoping they would skim for us.

Capturing sharp shots of them skimming was to come much later in the day and oddly enough just when we had our cameras trained on a pod of obliging hippos. The striking birds suddenly started skimming repeatedly through a nearby stretch of perfectly flat water, forcing us to switch away from our hippo photography and concentrate on their ‘aqua-batics’. It was a challenging, yet mesmerising occupation and just the practice we’d need for some spell-binding sessions later in the trip photographing these iconic birds contre-jour. It would be hard to trump those evenings spent with them skimming beautifully for us against a vivid Chobe sunset.  

The bird photography continued to be excellent and plentiful throughout. The many highlights included an uncommon sighting of flying ground hornbills, their wattles adding a bright pop of red against the blue sky. We had fish eagles with fish, saddle-billed storks flying against violet sunsets, dramatic rimlit darters exploding from the shadows, a bee-eater colony, go-away birds, pied-kingfishers with fish (and hovering right above us), a hamerkop building a nest and a fascinating stand-off between a goliath heron and two fish eagles.

We got lucky with a leopard sighting too, a big male crossing the open ground at a spot called Elephant Bay, who jumped when he was suddenly mobbed by a fish eagle then chased into hiding by the ever-present elephants in the area.

We had our fair share of lion encounters, both from the river and on the couple of game drives we did in the national park. We were really spoiled for choice one morning when, having coffee while waiting for some lions we’d spotted to cross the river in pursuit of a large herd of buffalo they’d been following, our guide heard from the houseboat crew that there were also lions on the opposite bank to our mooring. We agreed it was a gamble but the latter might now prove the better bet (we got the chance to photograph the first ones later that day). We got back just in time to get them drinking from the river and to see one, rather ambitiously, climbing a tree in pursuit of a baboon.

On game drives we had lions on an impala kill and a sighting of a large pride all to ourselves one morning when our guide spotted them on the move and predicted correctly where they’d go to drink at the river.

Other treats included two sightings of rare roan antelope and a nice photo opportunity from the river of a beautiful sable antelope that came down to a deserted Elephant Bay one morning to drink.

We even had the perfect photographic finale. On our last afternoon, we were busy photographing waterbirds (and yet more skimmers) and a baby hippo that had jumped in panic when it suddenly clocked there was a croc on the bank right by it. Its mother then rushed at the croc and chased it into the water and that’s when we noticed a large group of giraffe moving out onto the floodplain. We knew they’d prove great subjects for silhouetting against the sunset if they stayed. And we knew the sunset would be made even more special that afternoon following the gradual build-up of clouds during the day. It was sad, as always, that our photo-filled adventure on the river had to end, but at least we went out on a high.

And finally to the all-important thank yous. First, thanks go to our two boat guides Laskey and Shuur for their tireless efforts to get us in the right spot at the right time; for their great company, for being great baristas and bar tenders on the river as well as great boatmen. Next, it’s thanks to all the houseboat and hotel staff for looking after our needs so well when we were back from sessions. We all felt right at home.

And now some applause from us for our brilliant team of photographers (photographers re-united on this occasion) who kept the group dynamic turned up to eleven. Thumbs up to MB – few Chobe birds were left unphotographed following your visit and hornbills will from now be renamed ‘hornbeams’ in your honour), to EP for services to embroidery (the bag is still fab plus you always have us in stitches), to SV  for every ‘S moment’ on a Toon trip, to SW for thoroughly rocking the Chobe’s champagne lifestyle, to PB for adding the artistic flair, and to safari T-shirt model RP (how do you do that with one case?!) for supplying us with some fantastic home-made boerewors (aka game sausage) on return. Yum!