I finally got all of the smugmug uploads for Zambia and Botswana done, so if you want to see more photos, check those out.
The day after Victoria Falls, we had primarily scheduled an elephant backed safari. The manager at our hotel suggested that we also do a village walk, since we had a little bit of time in the morning for it. We took a boat ride (everything is a boat ride) a ways down the river to the village where some of the hotel staff live. It looked like a pretty typical village similar to what we’d seen driving by. Our guide for this was a older woman from the village. She showed off her gardens where they grow vegetables for themselves and to sell to the hotel among other places. 
After the village walk, we headed back onto the road for the elephant back safari. Our driver there took his already beleaguered van and charged it up the hill on the dirt road, until the mirror on the passenger side door fell off. After stopping to collect this, he continued charging up the hill until the shocks fell off or at least were completely broken. We had a rather scary rest of the ride, with the suspension completely bottoming out any time we hit a bump, which was often. Luckily he realized that he needed to slow down when the van started bouncing uncontrollably.
Eventually we did arrive at our destination, and the driver went off to get another van while we were doing our safari. The elephant back safari wasn’t terribly interesting. It was cool to be able to interact with the elephants closely, but they didn’t seem terribly thrilled about trudging around with us on the same walk they probably do several times a day. There was a very adorable newborn elephant running around with its mother though that we got to interact with a little bit.
The next day we had our day trip to Botswana to see the Chobe River park. It turns out, this was a much shorter, though somewhat convoluted drive. We went through Zambian immigration to leave, then stopped at the river, our driver stayed behind and put us on a small boat. A minute or two later on the other shore, we met another driver, who took us through Botswana’s immigration, taking all of about three minutes, and then onto the lodge where we were doing the Chobe River safari from.
The first part of this was a cruise around a formerly, between Botswana and Namibia, island in the Chobe river that lots of wildlife like to spend the day on, since it’s largely free of predators. We mostly saw animals that we’d seen plenty of at Londolozi, but it was a very different setting so it was still exciting. There were plenty of elephants, hippos and crocodiles. As you’d imagine it was a good spot for birds as well.
We also saw elephants crossing the river onto the island,
and Hippos grazing on land, instead of hanging out in the water. This is somewhat unusual, since it was well into the 90s that day.
The next part of the day was a more traditional jeep style safari. We got a lot of great giraffe sightings on this, and hundreds of elephants.
Apparently, at Chobe, they are on the verge of actually having too many elephants, and they’re not quite sure what to do about it.