Off to the Caprivi Strip

Trip Start Jul 09, 2008

Trip End Jul 30, 2008

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Where I stayed

Nambwa Campsite

Flag of Namibia Caprivi Strip, Namibia
Thursday, July 17, 2008

We left Greg and Phil and drove down to the Namibian border to the Caprivi Strip, a land of fertile, flat floodplains and pristine woodland. The strip itself is an oddity of old colonial boundaries as it is 500 km long and only 32km wide at its narrowest. It was named after German Chancellor Leo von Caprivi who negotiated this finger shaped land in an exchange with the United Kingdom back in 1890 in order to give Germany access to the Zambesi River and a route to Africa's East Coast. It has often been the subject of dispute between Namibia and Botswana.
It was a long drive along the Caprivi Strip and we were to stop off at Kongola to buy provisions as we would be camping tonight. To our horror the shop in Kongola was closed and for a moment I tried to remember what we had in the way of cans and packets and whether we could make anything edible. As luck would have it there was another shop called 'Cheap Store' a little further down the road. 'Cheap Store' was not Tescos and their stock comprised of tins of Weeners and frankfurters, loo rolls, Omo and black boot polish! Half the store was also taken over by the local bar

Nambwa Camp

. One of the locals staggered up to us and started talking Tswana, a frightening man with blood shot eyes and who was obviously not quite all there. This seemed to amuse the others who explained with hand signals that he was not quite right. Meanwhile we were stuck with the difficult task of finding something edible amongst the strange items in the store. In the end we bought macaroni, frankfurters and a loaf of bread.

We crossed the Kwando River and saw the sign for Nambwa Community Campsite to our right. For reasons I cannot fathom you first have to pay the National Park Entry fees for Bwabwata park at the park headquarters down a very rough road to the left. I cannot believe a lot of people bother to do this but we thought we should. Having paid our park fees we then did the 14kms down the other side of the road to the campsite. This was not particularly simple .The instructions had said if in doubt keep to the left but it wasn't that easy and 14 kms turned into 20 as we took a wrong fork in the road. It was here though that we saw our first elephants walking along a fire break. There is something absolutely amazing about these huge animals.
There are 6 excellent private campsites at Nambwa overlooking the Kwando river and the northern part of Botswana. The river is in fact the border between Namibia and Botswana. There is a very clean well maintained shower and loo block with hot showers and flush loos - a luxury when camping. As we arrived at our site it was like a scene from Snow White

Elephants at Caprivi

. There was a Hoopoe, brightly coloured red and yellow birds and a squirrel, all of which ran for cover as soon as we came close. The site had a beautiful setting along the river.

We went out on one of the game drive loops and saw lots of wildlife. The elephants here were quite aggressive and trumpeted and flapped their ears whenever we approached. Despite their size elephants are quite well camouflaged in the trees and it was incredibly easy to miss them. I had heard that most of the time this aggressive display doesn't end in a charge but we were not going to take that chance. Apparently 90% of the time an elephant will stop charging before they get to you - so it was only the other 10% we should worry about! There were also lots of baboons, kudu and various other antelope around.

George had picked up a bit of a stomach upset which turned out to be a blessing in disguise for him as he did not have to eat the very mediocre macaroni and frankfurter meal we had. That night the snorts and calls of the hippos seemed incredibly close.