Last Friday night, Doug, Karam and I hopped on the lovely Intercape bus and took an overnight bus ride up to the Caprivi region—the World Headquarters of Elephant EnergyJ We departed at 5:30PM and arrived around 9AM the next morning—not exactly our idea of a good time, but we survived.
We asked the bus driver to let us off in a town (not really a town, more like an intersection) called Congola and Doug’s intern Colin would pick us up. The bus driver just couldn’t believe the Americans would want to get dropped off in the middle of no where so he proceeded to blow past the intersection and instead dropped us off about a mile past the intersection. Trip on the Intercape: $35.00, Walking all of your bags down a desolate strip of desert in Africa in the heat of the morning, Priceless.
We splurged on a 4wd vehicle and spent the day driving around Babwata National Park—this was one of my favorite parts of our trip last year so I was glad we could repeat the experience for Karam—the place is filled with lots of and lots of elephants. After our day in the park, we stayed out at a friend’s new campsite and then Dan took us on a pontoon boat ride in the early AM where we got to spot lots of lots of hippos. As you may or may not know, hippos only eat grass but they kill more humans than any other animal in Africa. Ironic for a vegetarian, I suppose. Forget the honeybadger—the hippo’s going to give it a run’s for its money for the title, “bad ass of Africa.” Anyway, Dan’s boat had been “hit” by hippos six times in the last six weeks so we took extra caution as we approached any and all hippo spots. Luckily, for us, we were able to stay far enough away to enjoy the hippos, but not be scared for our lives.
Some photos from our excursion..
Up close and personal with Ele's in Nambwa
Sunset at the campsite in Caprivi
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