River views and roaming elephants. A hair salon in a tree house and a golf course. This is the Mowana Safari Resort & Spa. Lying on the banks of the Chobe River, it’s in a small town called Kasane in Botswana.
Built around an 800-year old baobab tree this lodge has 110 luxury rooms and four suites all overlooking the Chobe River. Mowana otherwise known as the baobab. A prehistoric species which predates both mankind and the splitting of the continents over 200 million years ago. And native to the African savannah. It’s a succulent, so in the rainy season it absorbs and stores water in its trunk, and then, when it’s the dry season produces a nutrient dense fruit. There are lots of legends about baobabs. One suggests God got rather angry, uprooted one and flung it to the ground. Upside down. Why? Because it kept walking when He first planted it into Chobe soil.
At Mowana Safari Resort there are 100+ bedrooms all with air-conditioning and en-suite bathrooms. There are also 4 luxury suites.
All rooms and suites face the Chobe River and are equipped with tea/coffee-making facilities, ceiling fans, mini bars, hairdryers as well as mosquito nets and electric insect repellents. They also have satellite televisions and direct dial phones.
You can eat onsite too. Both the Serondella Restaurant and Savuti cocktail bar overlook the river as well. An abundance of wildlife heads to the river at twilight, so this is the place to be.
Play tennis, have a round of golf. There’s a 9-hole course.
You can also go walking or mountain biking. Take a breakfast or sunset cruise down the river or float along in a mokoro or motorboat and try and catch a tiger fish.
And of course, there, right there is the Chobe National Park. The lodge offers numerous opportunities for guided game viewing. By day or night. It’s not uncommon to see hundreds of elephants on these floodplains at one time.
Go through the Sedudu gate and explore the national park. Here, antelope, giraffe, zebra, lion and leopard roam free. And, of course, the Chobe Game Reserve is famous for its enormous elephant population. There are almost 45,000 of them as well as 450 bird species. The park also has a couple of indigenous animals, namely the puku and Chobe bushbuck.
Or go up. Literally. Into the air and take a helicopter trip to the nearby Victoria Falls.
If you want to experience some local culture there’s an African village close by. Try local food and watch tribal dancers.
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