Caprivi Strip: Mahango Game Reserve & Kavango
Namibia & South Africa, July – August 2024
Day 2 – Jul 12: Windhoek – Grootfontein (Roy’s Rest Camp)
Willem-Jan and Willeke’s arrival flight was delayed to this morning, due to bad weather in Europe… As Mega and I had already picked up our car and done all shopping yesterday we arranged to meet at the airport, pick-up our second car there and start our journey direct from the airport in Windhoek, heading to Grootfontein for a stop-over on our way to the Caprivi strip. It’s a good tar road all the way, so you can really drive a decent distance in just half a day.
We arrived in Grootfontein in the afternoon, and spend our first night in the bush at the very nice and comfortable Roy’s Rest Camp. I had stayed in this camp during my first rip to Namibia, back in 2018, also on our way to Caprivi. The location is just a bit off the main tar road, surrounded by bush and with a decent amount of small wildlife roaming around the camp, including Dik Dik and Guineafowl, which both are not always easy to photograph elsewhere!
Day 3 – Jul 13: Grootfontein – Divundu, Mahango Game Reserve (Ngepi Camp)
The next day we drove via Rundu to Divundu, in the Caprivi Strip. Caprivi is a narrow protrusion of land in Northeast Namibia, bordered by Botswana, Angola and Zambia. It is Namibia’s most water-rich area, with the Kavango and Kwando rivers flowing through it from Angola; the Kavango river, or Okavango, then flows into Botswana and ends in the Okavango Delta, and the Kwando river becomes the Chobe river, before merging with the mighty Zambezi river from Zambia, just before the famous Victoria Falls on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Our main destination here is the Mahango Game Reserve, which I first visited in 2018.
Although this park is relative small and little known, it’s an absolute fantastic park with lots of diverse wildlife and a great start for a Namibia safari!
From Grootfontein we drove north and soon passed the veterinary fence. What is most striking once you pass the vet fence is the enormous difference in scenery as well as people living here. South of the fence the landscape is dominated by enormous cattle and wild farms and plantations, with very few traditional villages. It doesn’t really feel particularly “Africa”. But once you pass the fence you suddenly arrive on a complete different planet: THIS is Africa, this is how we learnt about it at school, 40 years ago or so. And most striking is that it seems that really nothing has changed, at least not for the majority of people living here. They are very, very poor and hardly have anything…
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Veterinary Cordon Fence
Beef exports play an important role in the Namibian agricultural economy, and stringent disease-control measures are therefore in place. The veterinary cordon fence (VCF), also known as the redline, is a stock disease control mechanism that protects Namibia’s beef industry from stock diseases, such as foot-and-mouth and lung sickness.
However, the history of the redline is a controversy that dates back to the early years of Germany’s colonial rule over Namibia. To protect German herds from epidemics, a veterinary cordon fence was introduced in 1897, which resulted in Namibia being divided into a northern and southern part. The fence became known as the redline, because it was printed on maps in red ink. The fence spans the central north of Namibia from the Atlantic Ocean to Botswana.
The redline soon also became a political boundary in German South West Africa. The area south of the redline became known as the area inside the Police Zone, while the area north of the redline became known as the area outside the Police Zone. The implication of this was that the area within the Police Zone was directly under the governing control of the German colonial state, while the area outside the Police Zone was ruled indirectly through a system of appointed traditional authorities. In effect, this boundary separated Namibians living in the north from white settlement areas to the south, although not all indigenous groups of South West Africa lived north of the Police Zone.
Under South Africa’s apartheid rule in Namibia, the redline served not only as a veterinary control, but also acted as a physical barrier restricting the movement of black Namibians north of the line to the south of the line. Through the years, the fence has become an unwelcome reminder of Namibia’s colonial and apartheid past. With Namibia’s independence in 1990 and the growth in exporting beef to international markets since, many of Namibia’s livestock herders have raised their discontent with the continuing existence of the redline, arguing that it denies them the same economic opportunities as those livestock herders living south of the fence.
We decided to visit one of the traditional houses which are dotted along the almost perfectly straight road. We didn’t want to just stop and walk into someone’s privacy though, so we decided to stop near a few traditional houses and have lunch first, hoping for some local kids to come to us and then ask if they can show us around at their homes. We didn’t have to wait very long to have some kids come closer to check us out…
An hour later we were back in the car, driving over this perfectly straight tar road, lined with little fields and traditional villages and mud houses.We arrived around lunch time at Ngepi Camp, a fantastic camp on the shore of the Okavango river, also called the Kavango.
We checked in and booked a sunrise river cruise for the next day. In 2018 I had been here before as well, so I pretty much knew what to do and where to go to get the most of our stay here! A river cruise is an absolute must; I prefer sunrise as wildlife is just much more active, although most people tend to do a sunset cruise.
The entrance of the Mahango Game Reserve is less than half an hour south from Ngepi Camp. The reserve is split by a gravel road that connects Namibia with Botswana; each side of this road offers a distinctly different habitat and a sand track leads through each of them. One side consists of the floodplains of the Kavango river, which further downstream in Botswana feeds the Okavango delta. The other side is further away from the river basin, more dry and with patches of savanna surrounded by thicker bush. There’s also a man-made waterhole at the farthest point of the sand road, to provide a lifeline for wildlife here. Always a good place to visit!
In the afternoon we did a game drive through the floodplains first, as this is where a lot of the wildlife is congregating in the afternoon.
With already so much wildlife we ended up not making it all the way to the viewpoint at the farthest point of the sand road. overlooking the floodplains. We had to make sure to be out of the park’s gate before sunset, as that is when the gate simply will be locked… Until next morning.
Day 4 – Jul 14: Mahango Game Reserve
In the morning we did a private sunrise river cruise, which was really good fun and the guide of Ngepi Camp was excellent. Of course the hippos were our main target, but also crocodiles, buffaloes and of course plenty of birds. For bird watchers this is really a must visit destination!
It was an awesome trip on the river, so much to see! What is surprising is that how few boats you see; this part of Namibia is still relative unknown amongst the fast increasing number of visitors, while these wetlands add so much to a Namibia experience. Most of Namibia is generally very dry and mostly dominated by desert landscapes and dry riverbeds.
Back in camp we had breakfast and then relaxed a couple of ours, which we hadn’t done yet since arriving in Namibia! After lunch we went on our next safari drive, again to the floodplains we visited the day before. Today we wanted to make it to the viewpoint, for some sundowners.
Day 5 – Jul 15: Divundu – Mobola Island Lodge
After breakfast we packed up our camp, and decided to drive through the other side of the park with both cars.
This side of the park is not as rich in wildlife, but we were hoping to see some new animals. And we did: near the waterhole we found a small herd of Roan antelope, a fairly rare antelope that likes to dwell the savanna.
That was the Mahango Game Reserve, an excellent start of our trip. As we wanted to explore a bit more of the Caprivi strip and at the same time shorten a bit the drive to our next destination we had decided to travel a little west along the Kavango river, to a place recommended to us by our car rental company: the Mobola Island Lodge. A fairly luxury safari lodge, but also with some excellent camp sites, right on the shore of the river.
It was only an hour drive, and upon arrival we booked another private sunset river cruise. We then had lunch in our camp and relaxed a couple of hours; Willem-Jan and Willeke even had a swim in the resort’s pool. It then was time for our sunset river cruise, to explore not only the Namibian side of the Kavango river, but also the other side, which is Angola.
An excellent last afternoon along the Kavango river, making ourselves ready for our next destination and experience: the San bushmen, one of the indigenous tribes of Namibia!
