Ngepi Camp,Caprivi - Quirky, crowds, though worth a visit

On the sandy road  into Ngepi Camp we find ourselves in convoy.  There’s a nearly full parking lot and a queue at the reception desk.  European tourists sit around the bar playing with their gadgets on the free wi-fi and drinking Tafel Lager.

The possibility of disappointment recedes as we find our campsite.  Although we are quite close to our neighbours they are quiet and friendly.  It’s my own prejudice, but being here in this popular camp feels like following the crowd.  It's quirky signs and open air bathrooms attract tourists from all over the world. Including ourselves.

It’s still a pleasant place and a makoro ride goes some way to restoring my equilibrium.  No rattling two-stroke engine powering our cruise.   Just the tinkling of the great Kavango river as our bows creased its surface.  Christopher is our guide.  His manner reflects the calm languid river he grew up on.  He’s tall and calm and speaks with the slow easy authority about the ways of the river.  He knows the birds by sight as well as sound.  Several African skimmers sweep low down the centre of the river. He points out the Green Backed Heron with its delicate yellow facial markings, the Pied, Giant and Malachite Kingfishers.  I learn the difference between the Little and Greater Egrets

We give hippo’s a wide berth.  Sitting at water level increases the feeling of being part of it and the sense of vulnerability.  We’re two boats and even when there is plenty of water between us and the hippos both paddlers increase their tempo until we are a way past them.  The crocodile basking in the day’s last rays of sun is deemed safer.  We glide up to it so close that the paddler, if he wanted to, could reach out and touch it with his paddle.  As we draw nearer my wife’s muttering becomes louder and more concerned, then the animal slips quickly into the water and disappears below the surface.

As we are about to pull up to a sandbank for sundowners some teenaged boys are polling their boats home.  They cut the corner of a wide bend and then suddenly take a sharp right turn back to the bank they were originally hugging.  They’ve spotted a pod of hippos in the centre of the river.

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Sunset at Ngepi.  Egyptian geese fly in a silent V torwards the west where the sun is glowing an unbelievable crimson as it closes the gap with the horixon.   Hippos belw and snort and grunt to each other.  I can see the tips of their nostrils and ears breaking the smooth fast flowing surface of the Kavango River.  A pair of fish eagles call to each other.  Doves coo and other unidentified birds twitter deep in the trees as they settle for the night.

The temperature is comfortable now, down from the earlier winter’s heat of 33 degrees.  My three legged-pot bubbles above the coals of hard, heavy wood and a beer sweats in my hand.