Captivating Caprivi

We were looking forward to the Caprivi strip, because Martin promised us we'd see hippos!

So we were up early (a real feature of this trip) and headed off to cross the border. It was coming up to Christmas so the queues at the border were very long, but all in all we were done in 40 mins so not too bad. We sped over to re-enter Namibia without incident and drove a bit until we found a huge boabab tree and Joe sorted breakfast out.

We had a lot of driving to do and without delay headed off again and several hours later we were all pretty sleepy until Manuella yelled "elephants!", Joe did a U-turn and there were. Loads of them, big ones and little ones. It was amazing to see them near the road like that.

In high excitement we chatted away until we reached our camp for the night, in a park called Nambwe. You need a 4x4 for this park and we bumped along, Martin said something about not breaking promises. There, across the water were hippos! We were so excited. We all piled out of the truck and ooh'd and aahh'd as we watched a mother and a baby hippo go into the water. We stayed there for a few minutes before driving off to our last campsite.

It was the nicest one, right by the water (near marauding hippoes then) and the showers and toilets were lovely, really rustic. We made camp, Cathal and I desperately trying to beat Manuella and Emma too it, but failing once again.  Soon after we were all settled and relaxed, we headed off on our last game drive. We saw a huge python and a carcass a leopard had hung in a tree (ugh) and we saw lots of elephant dung, but couldn't find the elephant. You'd think something that big would be easy to find, but it wasn't, despite Martin's very best efforts.

Just as it was getting very dark, Cathal spotted some hippos. Martin veered off towards the water and stopped just before we all got wet. There were loads of hippos who'd just been getting out of the water but went back in when they saw us. One of them jumped (no really, those things can jump) up in the water and crashed down. They did all the things you expect hippos to do, like open their mouths. However it was too dark to get any great pics.

We headed back to camp tired but happy, enjoyed our last Martin meal and headed for bed. Next stop - Zambia.