For a slide show of this trip
This trip should be on everyone's bucket list. It was fantastic on several levels, but too expensive to do more than once in life. This photo is of the Chobe River where we saw many layers of animals in the same place: buffalo, elephants, giraffe, hippos, baboons; sometimes all in one scene.
We would go out in the early morning for about four hours, and again in the evening tracking game. We weren't allowed to get out of the landcruisers except in areas designated a "stretch point". You can see why in this photo to the left. 
We got so close to lions we could see the flies on their backs. They basically ignored us, having grown up with the vehicles around them.
We stayed primarily in tents, but it wasn't camping as we generally think of it. Behind the wall was a flush toilet and a shower and we had beds with mattresses. We were treated like royalty with lots of attentive staff, pans to soak our feet upon our return. And they sang to us almost nightly.
The purpsose was to be close to the animals. That we were as we could hear hippos and baboons from inside our tent. Elephants would stroll by, and at one place bats nested in the rafters of the dining room.
There are 450 different species of birds in Botswana, and we counted over 60 that we saw. This is a saddlebilled stork after a fish.
We had three leopard sightings: the most unusual was almost at dusk. We had stopped to watch a bird called a Kori Bustard, the largest bird that flies. Then there was rustling in the tall grass and growling. We had stumbled upon two mating leopards. Our guide had only seen this one other time in his ten year career.
Another highlight was coming upon lions after killing a buffalo. By the time we got there only one remained guarding the kill from hyenas, jackals, marabou storks, and vultures. The other lions were panting with pain from full bellies, lying in the road or drinking from a nearby watering hole. We returned two days later to find only the skull and backbone left. This photograph had been accepted for a juried show at the Gallery NRC at 44th & Tennyson to open in June.
