Along the Kavango River

The Kavango River starts in Angola then becomes the border between Angola and Namibia until it turns south, crosses Namibia’s Caprivi Strip and flows into Botswana where, unlike most rivers, that flow to the sea, it ends up dribbling out in the desert forming the Okavango Delta, one of the planet’s most fantastic wildlife habitats. 

This morning, Abel took us across the bridge to the other, eastern, side of the river for a game drive. Near the entrance of the park are ruins of buildings, an old South African military base from the war of independence when South West Africa was liberated from apartheid South Africa and became the independent nation of Namibia in 1990. Among the ruins we spotted a small herd of sables, a rare antelope that we had seen only once before, in 2022; actually only Maria saw a single sable in the distance through her zoom lens, I only saw the photo. This time we crossed paths several times with a herd of about a dozen and were able to get quite close.

We drove along the floodplain, flat with dark soil and stubby green grasses and areas of standing water. It looks like it would be spongy to walk on. We saw many bird species that Abel identified faster than I could forget them (Maria did a better job of remembering as she was tagging her photos). Then, up ahead, we saw a few Cape Buffalo walking out of the bush onto the floodplain. These guys are as big as North American bison (probably why the latter were miscalled “buffalo”) and no, I guess the floodplain is not spongy to walk on as each of their hooves is supporting 350 lbs or more. More and more followed, dozens until there were over 100. As the buffalo were coming down from the bush, elephants started down in parallel, a few at first then more and more until their numbers also were easily past 100. Hundreds of huge herbivores cooling off in the midday heat.

Not sure if I have mentioned this before, but we have been traveling in an air conditioned Toyota Fortuner, an off road SUV. Thank god, the temperatures have been up to 108F/40C.

We headed back across the river to the lodge for lunch and a nap. 

Around 3:00 Abel took us back to the western side of the river, where we saw the gigantic herd of elephants yesterday. On the floodplain there were elephants, zebras, impalas, birds, all grazing in the late afternoon. It was very idyllic, pure nature, no noises of vehicles or planes, no buildings in sight. 

We saw a family of baboons in the bushes, adults grooming each other with the care of a hairdresser, methodically going over the recipient’s fur inch by inch, eating any fleas or ticks found. Juveniles were playing, romping around. One climbed a thin branch of a bush, then two others tried to join him (this was definitely boy behavior), there was some shrieking and pushing until they all fell to the ground. We had a good laugh at that.

As the sun was getting lower, we decided it was time to get going so we could make our way back to the park gate before it closed at sunset. Just as we were about to turn on to the main road, there were two female lions with a young male whose mane was just starting to grow in. Abel was surprised to see them on the eastern side of the river because just a few miles south, over the border in Botswana, there are farms. The farmers poison the lions to keep them from attacking their livestock. So the Namibian park managers try to chase or transport lions and leopards to the western side of the river. In Botswana, the western bank of the Kavango is national park.

We made it to the gate just as the sun was touching the horizon, the close of another special day.