Today we headed to Botswana for the day, to safari in Chobe. We got picked up at 7am with a few others from the hostel and drove to the border, where we passed through the most efficient exit post so far. The driver took all of our passports, and we waited for a few nervous minutes (hoping he didn’t do a runner!) before he returned with our stamps. We then transferred onto a boat to do a two minute river crossing into Botswana – this even included about 20 seconds in Zimbabwean territory. After this we transferred into a swish bus, got a Botswana entry stamp and headed to a boat for a river cruise.

The guides were incredibly knowledgeable. They have to study an intensive course for 6 months to learn about all of the animals, trees and birds that are in the park. They learn all the bird calls, the gestation periods and life cycles of the animals and tonnes of other information too.

We saw a huge range of creatures, including eagles, crocodiles, elephants, hippos, an African monitor lizzard, impala and warthogs. The hippos had massive scratches on their backs from fighting with each other. They are fearsome creatures, and extremely aggressive, but apparently they are vegetarian. They must just see killing humans as a sport! Another of their favourite games is to poo while they are in the water, and swish their tails at the same time. This sends the dung flying in every direction, and marks their territory. Nice…

After a delicious lunch, we jumped into a jeep and set off around the park. In addition to seeing more of the animals from before, there were also a lot of kuru, some rather shy giraffes, a huge number of baboons and some buffalo. Probably the most exciting bit was watching 3 elephants having a mud bath on the shore, right next to a 2 metre long crocodile. The elephants were oblivious to start with, but eventually spotted their foe. One of the elephants was a baby, so quite vulnerable. This didn’t seem to bother them, and they even started to goad the croc by squirting the muddy water in his direction. He spent a good long time considering his options, before being chased away by the two larger elephants. We were hoping to see a fight, but in the end the crocodile realised he was outnumbered.

After seeing an amazing number of animals, we headed back to Zambia. In the evening we went out with our safari friend, Sharat, and ate some sweet chili crocodile – yum!

• Chobe