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12.Caprivi Strip, Namibia - 31 August to 6 September, 2009
We left Tsodilo Hills in Botswana on Monday 31 August after looking at the museum at the Main Camp.
W drove to the Namibian border at Muhembo, where we read an advertisement for a new lodge on the Kavango River which flows down from Angola and brings all the water for the Okavango Delta in the rainy season. Having stayed at Ngepi Camp only 5km away last visit, we decided to try this one out. Our campsite at Nunda Lodge was right on the river and the lodge was a beautiful place with a thatched reception area, restaurant, and bar with a deck overlooking the river, and even a beautiful swimming pool. The lodge faces north-west, so we watched a sensational African sunset over the river while we enjoyed our sundowner, and followed that with a restaurant meal.
However we found our campsite a little too hot with little shade, so next day we decided to go back to Ngepi Camp which has more established native trees and shade. We got another fantastic campsite right on the river, and here the river has wound around so that the campsite faces north-east. We spent a whole afternoon here 'hippo-gazing'. The hippos were floating about in the river right in front, and even climbed up the opposite bank for a short time. They are fabulous to watch but hard to photograph as in the heat of the afternoon they only surface with their heads for a very short time. By the time you've located them with your lens, they've disappeared. That night there was a full moon and we had roasted a chicken in our camp oven during the afternoon, and ate it on the river with the moon in one direction, and the colours of the setting sun in the other, with the hippos grunting and snorting away in the background. Not too hard to take!
On Friday 4 September we left the Kavango River, drove to Divundu and then turned east along the Caprivi Strip - a long stretch of bitumen, past a number of villages, and elephant warning signs along the way, though we saw just one! That night we camped in the Bwabwata National Park at Bum Hill, a campsite near Kongola, which overlooks the Kwando River. Each campsite has en-suite facilities and a raised deck for game viewing. No game, but lots of fabulous birds, and incredible river 'night noises' including hippos snorting.
The next day we drove to Nambwa campsite, another fabulously run community campsite, still in the national park but down a 4x4 track a further 12 kms down the river. A really beautiful place, much more remote with even more birdlife, and many elephants, kudu, reed buck and impala.
On Sunday 6 September after a magnificent sunrise over the river we drove along the rest of the Caprivi Strip to the Zambian border at Katima Mulilo, ready to drive on to Victoria Falls.
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