Chobe Sunrise Upto Sunset Day Trip From Victoria Falls 5am – 7pm

Awesome day! We saw animals everywhere and the guides we very informative. Highly recommended this tour.

Seeing mating leopards and birds feeding on elephant carcass. Elephant activity, lots of crocodiles, giraffes and hippos.

We definitely expected more from this trip. Our hotel pick up at 5.30 ran very smoothly and efficiently, we had a great driver who pointed out to us various animals on the road en route. Hyena, elephants and a giraffe. Border crossing into Botswana also very smooth, we were the only people going through at sunrise. The early morning game drive advertised to us at 2 hours (7-9) ended up only being just just an hour long, we were hanging around at breakfast afterwards for about an hour, not 30 mins as stated in the itinerary. No drinks besides water are included in this tour. We didn't mind having to pay for our coffees at breakfast as they were super cheap, just the sort of thing you'd expect to be included. The day time game drive between 9.30-12.20 was fine. We saw lots of giraffes, elephants, buffalo and more - no cats, but we didn't really expect to this time of year, (the bush was quite green and overgrown still). But we were a little disappointed to see other safari vehicles in the park almost empty and ours completely full to capacity in terms of guests. It would have been more comfortable and enjoyable for everyone if we were split into two groups. The lunch at Cresta lodge was ok, nice surroundings and on the river. We watched monkeys, mongoose and warthogs in the grounds. The boat cruise after left a bit late as the organisers lost a few people in the group. They weren't very clear on timings to be honest. We were given a choice of 2 time options for the boat via email but when it came to it only given the option of the earlier time of 1.30pm. This trip is advertised as a 'sunrise til sunset' tour which is misleading. We were in the car back to the border by 4.30 (at the latest) so ultimately we did leave feeling disappointed by the entire thing. We would not book this trip again and would go for a different operator.

This was a sunrise tour where the vehicle pulled up on the side of the road and said, there's your sunset, take a photo. We were not advised that we would be sitting on the back of a vehicle, with no protection from the wind as it drove done the roads at 50kms/hr, we were freezing and blown to pieces. We were taken to lunch at 12.30 and then told that our sunset cruise didn't leave till 3.30pm and were left sitting at some other passengers hotel until that time. A buffet lunch was included but if we wanted a drink of water with lunch we had to pay for that. We paid a lot of money for this sunrise to sunset tour and spent over half the day sitting around doing nothing waiting for them to get organised.

On the whole I think this was a good tour. We saw a lot of big game - elephants, giraffes, hippos, and water buffalo - as well as smaller game - antelopes, impalas, baboons, and birds. The boat tour was great and did not disappoint in terms of the number and variety of animals we saw. The reason for 3 stars: The tour was advertised as starting at 5 am, and we were picked up at 5:30 am. This doesn’t seem significant, but one of the reasons why I went with this company was because of the early start, hoping to see animals that tend to be more active earlier in the morning. I don’t know if the half hour would have made a difference, but it was advertised to start at 5 am. Next, I felt uncomfortable about the pick-up. I was expecting a car/van from the tour company, but instead it was someone in a private vehicle without any indication that they were with the tour company - the driver just knew my name and came at the pick-up time. I would have felt more comfortable had I at least known the name of the driver ahead of time. Same goes for the pick-up from the boarder - we were not provided with the name of the driver who would be picking us up - we asked the driver who dropped us off at the boarder and he didn’t know (he only knew it wouldn’t be him). The safari vehicle did not have seatbelts. This wouldn’t have bothered me as much had we not been on the road for about 30 minutes between the border and the park itself. I would recommend this tour again, but I would have wanted to be aware of the above before booking it.