From Rundu to Ngepi Camp
Thursday, December 21, 2006
We eat breakfast and get our bearings. We run some errands in Rundu: the post office (NamPost); Telecom; the mail drop to mail letters; “Tango” or cell phone air time to call ahead to reconfirm our arrival (and whereabouts) with two upcoming destinations. We have learned that the Phillips will be at Ngepi Camp when we are there – it will be nice to meet Beth’s family. And we must follow up with Bovu Island in Zambia because they offer a travel visa service and will fax ahead our details to the border post at the Katima Mulilo bridge crossing.
We spend some time looking for an internet café or some such facility but give up eventually and leave for Ngepi Camp. We approach the Caprivi Strip and pass the northern entrance road to the Khaudom Game Reserve. Had at one point in the planning of the trip considered crossing Khaudom but Estelle has validated the decision to avoid it in December, “not a good time to see game” or “cope with the deep sand roads there in the rainy season”. Estelle asks us to “just look at the entrance road when you pass by on the B8” and though she and Arnot regularly conduct trips there, they are quite clear it is to be avoided during the summer months.
We turn off at Divundu and take the road south towards the Mohembo Border Post and Botswana. A series of humorous signs and then we reach Ngepi Camp http://www.namibiareservations.com/ngepi_camp.html. Another bush camp like Roy’s – but each camp is actually unique. Here we are right on the Okavango River’s edge in what Ngepi calls a “tree house”.
(We get a good feeling about Ngepi Camp even before we arrive there: a sign marking the way off the road between the B8 and the Muhembo Border Post, Namibia)
A large, cheerful group of guests including a lot of overlanders have set up tents. A gin and dry lemon on the simple wooden deck overlooking the river. The bar here must be one of the world’s great “happy hour” destinations and Tim, the Australian bartender, is doing a fine job in the role of host. The Phillips arrive and we spend several very pleasant hours in their company: the parents and their three attractive daughters. Will and Carole especially pleased by Ngepi and our companions. Lots of hippo noises and hippo action draws attention to the river.
Labels: Ngepi Camp, Rundu
The Rinderpest Fence and the Africa of Imagination:
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
(On the B8 in Kavango Land above the Rinderpest Fence: a kraal)
We are up very early so as not to be on the road after dark for the long drive ahead. When we had returned from Otjituuo to Roy’s in the dark we encountered 4 or 5 kudu on the gravel road. Kudu tend to be as unpredictable and skittish as American deer but are more the size of moose.
We re inflate our tires at Roy’s but use our own electric pump powered by the truck’s battery. The plastic tubing again proves to be unequal to the task: this time it blows a fuse on the cables and clamps arrangement attaching it to the battery. We complete the job using a muscle-powered floor pump (the old-fashioned backup) but this is shaky as the unit I have suffers the same problems as the electric pump (shoddy tubing and components). I complete the cock-up by damaging a half-rotten valve stem which will eventually develop a slow leak in a day or two.
We reach the veterinary fence on the B8 and here Will remarks that he is now “out of his zone of knowledge”. On one side of the fence the cattle are cordoned off from rinderpest (foot-and-mouth disease) and on the other are cattle unprotected from an epidemic scourge that altered African history in the 1890’s. The Africa of western popular imagination appears – this is Kavango Land. Kraals with thatched roofed buildings and rough wooden pickets and thorny brush piled at their base. Large numbers of people and cattle amble along the roadway (at intervals). The cattle small but with long, upward curving horns and the ubiquitous goats. The fence cordoning and isolation policy was also used in Botswana in the past to control the tsetse fly and the spread of sleeping sickness.
We reach Rundu well before dark and settle in at the Sarasungu River Lodge http://www.sarasunguriverlodge.com/ A river fish dinner for Will and me. Our accommodations overlook the Okavango River – its banks about 25 yards away. Music and voices pour out of Calai, Angola just on the other side.Labels: Calai, Rundu, Veterinary Fence
