Chobe river cruise in Botswana

For my birthday, we headed over to Chobe National Park in Botswana (2 hours away) and spent the night in the German run Garden Lodge. In Chobe, you can see a lot more animals and get closer to them than around Victoria Falls and we were not disapointed by our river cruise. Right off the bat, we saw this hippo:

And then a few minutes later, this hippo sunning himself

Daniel was extremely excited to see this crocodile

And of course we saw a ton of elephants on the river bank (Chobe is famous for them)

The river is the border between Botswana and Namibia so part of the time, we were in Namibia territory (me with elephants and the setting sun in the background)

The highlight was seeing some elephants swim across the river. Here is one of them looking like he's wearing something

And then three of them against the setting sun

After the cruise, we had a delicious dinner of impala steak, broccoli and carrots, and rice. And had interesting conversations with the owner's son, a professional rugby player with an accent just like Leonardo DiCaprio's in the Blood Diamond, and one of the staff, Mimi (from Botswana). Overall a very nice birthday!