Day 14 - Ngepe Lodge to Guma Lagoon

Kavango River, Namibia to Okavango Delta, Botswana

It is a inland tropical African pre-dawn.  The sounds are like nowhere else we have ever been.  Animal sounds range from roars to bellows to insects and birds and reptiles.  One sound is a definitely a hippopotamus.  The other is more menacing.  Do crocodiles make loud noise?  There are the ever present, and surprisingly loud, frogs.  There is a bird, the Swamp Boubou, that sounds like a beeping truck as it backs up.  Of course it is perched just outside the reed walls of our tree house.  And then there is the one that sounds like your smoke alarm low battery alert, and occurs with about the same frequency.  As we lie in our bed on the banks of the Okavango River, protected by mosquito netting, we can view the river flowing by in the predawn light.  It is an exotic, yet still primitive, setting.  We are in the tropics.  This hut only protects from wind and rain.  Its walls are of reed and the roof is thatch. Two of the walls are a reed curtain that we will keep rolled up all evening.

Our treehouse at Ngepe

Our view of the Kavango River from our tree house

Here in inland Namibia, the primary worries are insect borne diseases such  as malaria, the tsetse fly, and the crocs and hippos in the river.  Just last month, a young boy was taken by a crocodile from his dugout.  As for malaria, travelers can take medicines.  But the locals cannot, for they are powerful meds with long term side effects.  Leon is particularly worried about the malaria.  He has stopped taking the Malarone due to his reaction to one of its strong side effects.  Our bed had mosquito netting.

Today is another transit day, but with a very late start of noon.  Breakfast is not even until 8 o’clock.  We will head south to Botswana, leaving Namibia.  Except for the border offices and the fences at the border, it is hard to tell the difference between Botswana and inland Namibia.  It is flat with low trees and dry brown grasses.  Think South Texas with slightly different vegetation.  The villages and their homes remain clusters of small rondels, surrounded by fences of brush pushed up against small upright twisted and disformed logs.

Botswana is poor.  There is no other way to describe it.  Yet its people that we will meet as guides, workers in the lodges, and in other ways, will be friendly and nice.  The local language is Tswana, and the currency is the Pula.  Our road to the camp at Guma Lagoon is one of the worst yet.  We leave the Botswana super highway for a worse unpaved road.  This leads us to a small village where we will transfer some of  our equipment and ourselves to two small Land Cruiser trucks that were once white.  Both are old, well used, and fitted with rooftop air intakes.  Their metal bodies is cracking in places from fatigue, and the repairs are done with sheet metal patches and pop rivets.  Once we are on the “road” leading into the camp, I will quickly understand the fatigue cracks.  One of the trucks has three sets of bench seats to hold 12 of us.  It is a very tight fit.  The other is stacked impossibly high with a subset of our personal gear, plus the tents, food, and cooking equipment.

 

Village is just a term used to describe a cluster of homes, a school, and a few things that might be stores.  It is not a village as we would imagine it, but it is a place where people live.  Some of the homes are the traditional rondels; most are cement block with rough mortar inlaid between the blocks.  There are outhouses for sanitation, but they are not what you will find in our parks at home.

The road into the camp is not a road but tracks through the land.  There are low 30 foot trees, both acacia and thorn.  There is low, shrub like brush, and the sandy soil is white and gray.  It does not look fertile.  When one track becomes impassable due to the depth of the ruts in the sand, another is started.  Consequently there are many paths to choose from, but only one is the current right choice.  There are numerous signs to the Guma Lagoon Lodge, again on rough wood with cheap white paint.  When the rains come later in the season, much of this area will then be flooded.  Our driver is skilled and friendly with a round face and a good smile. He is wearing a plastic band like a Livestrong band, but this is labelled Mosquito Band.  I am pretty sure that I want one of those.

The road to Guma Camp

After 40 minutes of driving through the land, we arrive at some rough wooden gates and a sign that announces Guma Lodge.  Just inside the gates are a number of buildings made of rough wood and poles, with green canvas siding and roofs.  There are women there, and children playing.  The same architecture and building materials are used throughout the camp and lodge buildings.  It is very practical for the environment that people must live in and endure.

Enjoying the view of Guma Lagoon

Here it is not only hot, but as we are now on the Okavango Delta, it is also very humid and muggy.  The Kavango river forms in interior southern Africa, and does not flow to either the Atlantic or Pacific.  Instead it flows south to this delta land where the waters of a great river are absorbed into the earth, or evaporated into the air.  This delta land is in what would be a naturally arid climate with little rainfall, and a very high evaporation rate, but it is the recipient of the rains from far north of here in Angola. 

Tomorrow, we will travel by boat and dugout canoe (mokoro) deep into this delta land to see what its interior is like.  There should be crocodiles, hippos, elephants and innumerable birds.  Tonight we will camp near the lodge, eat in a canvas covered pavilion, have drinks by the surprisingly open lagoon, and otherwise relax in this civilized setting deep in a wilderness.  Tomorrow, we will camp out in the open, on an island somewhere deep in the marsh, unprotected from the animals in their natural habitat.  Leon is nervous.  Barb has promised to hold his hand when the elephants roar or a hippo gets too close to camp.

Leon & Barb in Botswana