It provides excellent game viewing and birding opportunities, with more than 75 mammal species and 450 bird types. The 11,700 sq km park, established in 1968, is located in northern Botswana and its life-source is the Chobe River which affords unique water-based game viewing opportunities, such as the unforgettable sight of elephant herds swimming across the river, trunks raised. On a game drive, in addition to vast herds of elephant, you may also encounter buffalo as well as zebra, impala, waterbuck, and predators,such as lion, leopard, cheetah and wild dog. Chobe National Park, in northern Botswana, has one of the largest concentrations of Game in Africa. By size, it is the third largest park in the country and is the most biologically diverse. It is also Botswana’s first national park. The first inhabitants of the Chobe area were the San Bushmen whose rock paintings can still be found in the park. Over the early decades of the 20th century they were joined by other tribes. The idea of a national park was mooted in the 1930s when Sir Charles Rey, the then resident Commissioner of Bechuanaland (as Botswana was previously known), proposed that the whole region become a wildlife reserve. Part of the Chobe district was soon declared a non-hunting area, before the official creation of the Chobe Game Reserve in 1960 which then became Chobe National Park in 1968.