I regretfully left Jollyboys in Livingstone so I could continue my trek south. What had originally been planned as three days in Livingstone and Victoria Falls turned into eight.

The vast array of things to do whilst there provided so much enjoyment and fun; however, the people I got to know at the hostel also created such a fun environment, it made it hard to break away and leave. But soon all of the great friends I had made began to embark on the next chapter of their travels, and eventually, there were only a couple of us left. There were new arrivals, but the time had come to move on.

I left for Botswana with two of the last remaining folks, Shaun – a tall, red-headed Australian with a great sense of humor – and Nilay – a beautiful dark-blond Turk. They met in Nicaragua while backpacking and fell in love. Shaun now lives in Turkey with Nilay and they plan to get married in Bali later this year. They are the cutest couple.

We hired a taxi to take us the one-hour drive to the Zambia – Botswana border. Once there, we processed through immigration and boarded a ferry across the Zambezi River.

However, this form of water transport did not fall into any of our more traditional concepts of a ferry, but more of a floating platform that had a little engine and a pilot’s bridge on top of a pole. The ferry could only take one semi truck and one car at a time, along with a smattering of people standing on the edges. There were three of these ferries running at any given time.

We disembarked on the Botswana side, processed through immigration and then caught a quick taxi ride to Kasane, the entry point to Chobe National Park.

I stayed at a quaint little hotel called The Old House, which was a nice little environment to land in. The hotel is right along the bank of the Chobe River, and it’s quite amusing to see signs that say, “Stay away from the water at night. High danger from crocodiles and hippos.”

God, I hope I don’t sleepwalk….