We were having drinks and just enjoying our time on the Zambezi when everything went into orbit. We were simply watching the river and slowly cruising along when an elephant walked into the river. That was the elephant in the prior post in the photo I took of Cory. At first, we were surprised and made several guesses about why the elephant walked into the river. We thought it might want a drink or want to take a bath or something like that.

You can see the first elephant to go in the water in the first photo. It went in rather slowly and cautiously. But then it kept going and going.

Before long, another elephant followed it in…and then another and another. One elephant didn’t look too sure about being in this parade and turned around like it wanted to go back to the land.

Eventually, it became obvious that the elephant parade was crossing the river from the Zimbabwe island over to the Zambia mainland. We noticed that some of the elephants were young and small and we wondered how they were going to cross the river when the water got too deep for them. But it turned out that the elephants have a built-in snorkel. Some small elephants had to go in over their heads.

This is a close-up of one of the larger elephants getting into the deeper water and testing her equipment.

Now you can see the elephants coming up on the Zambia side of the river. It was a fabulous experience that we felt lucky to have witnessed and a great ending to our trip.