The Zambezi Queen on the Chobe River

The Zambezi Queen

We were a tired bunch as we approached our new home in the setting sun. The scheduled six hour trip from Johannesburg had turned into a much longer one, mainly due to long, slow immigration procedures in Zimbabwe and border crossings in Botswana and Namibia, and we were now faced with much hotter weather.

Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti, while much closer to the equator, are at 6,000 to 7,000 feet elevation and the climate is temperate. That's not the case on the Chobe were the average temperature in September is 112 and in October and November it's 120. They call October and November the suicide months because of the unrelenting heat. Somehow I had not researched that in our pre-trip research and Kathy was questioning more than my sanity as we knew the electricity on the boat went off at 10 PM and did not get turned back on until 6 AM.

We had booked a suite at the front of the ship and that would at least give us a balcony and maybe some breeze, but as we were getting our boarding briefing we found out that the ship moored at night: so much for a breeze. Our suite was small and compact, but nicely appointed. The bow balcony pretty spartan, but the view would be great.

The real draw of the ship was the third floor communal area. It was here that we had cocktails, all meals  and just relaxed. It was a very special place and the camaraderie of our new found friends made it even more so.

With the sun setting we got ready for our first dinner on board and wondered what the next four days would bring. It would be pretty hard to top what we had already experienced.