Don’t Worry – That’s Just Matthew

After spending two nights resting at Ngepi Camp on the banks of the Kavango River, we decided it was time to try a few nights of real bush camping. Real bush camping involves camping in parks and wild areas without having the humans fenced in at night, which means all kinds of predators and wild animals can be in your camp at any time. 

It was a true 4x4 road - 2WDs were not allowed, and we drove through deep sand and parts of the lagoon to reach the camp

We drove northeast into the Caprivi Strip to Nambwa Camp in Bwabwata National Park, which makes up most of the panhandle of Namibia. First we had to pick up a permit to enter the Park, which can only be purchased on the far eastern end of the park. We didn’t have clear instructions to get to the ranger station, only that we should turn left and head 4 km north near a small town about 2 hours from our starting point. Amazingly, we found the right road and drove for awhile until we found a building titled “Office”, which we correctly assumed was the ranger station. After paying our fees and receiving strict instructions to show our permit to anyone who asked so we wouldn’t get arrested, we headed back out the gravel road to find another gravel road and traveled 14 km south to the actual camp. 

(Really – the woman who sold us the permit told us that we should avoid getting arrested by showing our permit to everyone – and when she said ‘arrested’, she crossed her arms in front of her like they were stuck in handcuffs. We think she was being a little overzealous in her job as so far no has cared much about anything we’re doing.)

On our way to the camp, we bumped into a breeding herd of 20+ elephants in the middle of the road, so we sat and watched for about 30 minutes and let everyone move off the road (and made sure all the youngsters were next to their mothers) before continuing. 

One of the ellies blocking our way

The elephants here in the Caprivi are small, and that’s partly due to the fact that until the Angolan war ended in 2002, this area was poached to near extinction. The animals are slowly coming back, and based on what we’ve seen, the elephants are happily repopulating their herds.

When we arrived at Nambwa, we spent a few minutes talking with Eric, the employee who lives on site. We asked him whether we had to worry about any animals getting into our campsite at night, and he said, quite seriously, 

“Yes. You can have elephants, lion, leopard, cheetah, wild dog, hyena, hippo, buffalo, crocodile…

…but not rhino!!” 

At that, he smiled widely, as if this was some huge consolation compared to all the other creatures we might have visiting us that night. In fact, we knew it was likely that elephants would be in the area, as different herds had been visiting the campsite for the past few weeks, so we were prepared for that, but hadn’t expected to contend with lions, leopard, hyena, or wild dog.

 

Once we set up a few chairs and our table (lesson learned from Halali campsite in Etosha National Park, where someone stole our campsite despite our vehicle being parked in it), we decided to head out on a late afternoon game drive. 

We drove around a bit aimlessly until we happened to come across a professional safari vehicle, and decided to follow them as they were more likely to know what they were doing than we are. We drove to a huge lagoon called Horsehoe, and saw a big family of baboons and a herd of 30+ elephants drinking across the lagoon. We parked near a couple of South African cars for sundowners (drinks at sundown for you non-South Africans) and made friends with the other group.

Sundowner at Horseshoe Bend

Ellies drinking from Horseshoe Lagoon

This young baboon was performing for us for awhile

It turned out that one of the women in the group had just finished a research project studying elephants, and she knew a lot more about animals and the bush than we did. We saw a hippo coming through the water to get on the bank right next to us, but our new friends said that as long as we kept talking, it would back off – and it did!

We watched the baboons playing for about an hour, and also saw guinea fowl marching up a tree to get into bed for the night, which was one of the funniest and most entertaining things we’ve seen on this whole trip. 

Our new friends shared a lot of their knowledge, including that the elephants would definitely be in our camp that night, how to know when elephants are relaxed, and also that a pride of lions had moved into the campsite right next to ours the week before! Most of the people here are using ground tents, which we think is just nuts! We haven’t had big animals in our camp yet, but we know we’d rather be on top of our car than on the ground next to them if it happens. According to our friends, the most important thing to do in a campsite at night is to make sure we have lots of lights on and a fire going, because the animals will stay away as long as there are lights on, but come in as soon as it’s dark.  

All of a sudden, our friends turned to us and said, “It’s time to get in the cars. Now.” It turns out that the baboons had given out the “gather round” call, meaning that they had sensed a leopard or lion on the near vicinity. We happily jumped into our truck and followed our new friends back to camp.

When we returned from our drive, it was around 6:30 and quite dark, so we hurried to set up our propane lantern and start a fire, all the while swinging our flashlights around like lunatics to make sure all the lions, leopards and hyena knew to stay out. 

We made a quick dinner of grilled sausage and steamed broccoli, and as we were just sitting down to eat we started hearing cracking branches and a few roars and rumblings. They sounded far away, so we kept eating, but soon realized they were much closer than we first anticipated. We looked down the road from our camp and could see elephants making their way towards us quickly. We packed up all of our food (to protect it from monkeys and other small creatures), brushed our teeth as fast as possible and climbed up to bed. It was 7:30. 

Julia's foot next to the footprint of our nighttime visitors

Trees torn down after the elephant visit

 For the next five hours, we had elephants surrounding our car. It was truly incredible. We watched them eating, exploring, and interacting until we were too tired to keep our eyes open any longer, and then fell asleep to the sounds of them pulling branches off of trees and hearing them chew their hard-earned meal. 

A few hours later, we woke up to the sounds of a small group of buffalo in our camp, and even later a few bull elephants made their way into our camp, had a small tussle, and left. 

The next morning we woke early and went out for an early game drive to see if we could spot any leopard, lion, hyena or wild dog. We drove for four hours, and saw all kinds of antelope, beautiful birds, and lots of baboons and elephant, but didn’t see any of the big cats or predators.

Buffalo bones

Gorgeous birds on our game drives

Baby elephant drinking

Once back in camp, we decided to take a walk to visit our new friends from the night before and to check out the viewing deck of the camp, where we saw a family of baboons, a big herd of impala and a breeding herd of about 10 elephants, with 2 very young and very cute babies. 

After relaxing for a few minutes, we agreed to go back to camp to do the dishes from the night before and to get ready for the night’s game drive. We had just returned when Asa quietly but firmly said “get in the car.” 

We climbed in, shut the doors, and then watched as a huge male hippo searched for food about 15 feet from our campsite, and us. 

Hippos are considered the most dangerous animal in Africa as they injure and kill more people than any other animal on the continent. The biggest danger is when you are between them and their pathway to the water – which we were – so we knew we had to get out of his way and into our car as fast as possible.

He continued rooting around for food for about five minutes, and then, with no warning, curled up and decided to take a nap.

We looked at each other and realized we were trapped – stuck in the car in our own campsite with a sleeping 1500 kg hippo as our prisoner.

After watching him for a bit, Asa cautiously got out of the car, and then I did as well. The hippo didn’t seem to notice us, and we talked about what we should do. At that moment, Eric, the friendly employee, happened to be walking by, so Asa flagged him down.

We explained that we had a small problem with a sleeping hippo in our camp. He came in, looking serious, took a look at our visitor, and said, “No problem. That’s just Matthew.”

Us: Oh, does that mean you know this hippo?

Eric: Yes. He was in campsite three this morning.

Us: Hmm. Does that mean he’s a friendly hippo?

Eric: Mmmm. (This was said in the “definitely not” tone of Mmmm that we’ve learned to differentiate from the “Yes” tone of Mmmm you often get as well).

Us: So what should we do?

Eric: Just be. It’s okay – no problem – that’s just Matthew.

Matthew napping in our campsite, in all his splendor

Eric was right – Matthew was no problem. After sleeping in our camp for 4 hours, he woke up, wandered around sleepily, and then went back in the water. We went for a quick afternoon game drive, and got back to camp early to make sure we had time to make dinner in case the elephants came back into camp.

As we were brushing our teeth and getting ready for bed, we heard the new campers in campsite 3 start screaming and the sounds of their car doors slamming.

We called over to ask if they were okay, and they replied, “Yes, but there’s a hippo in our camp!”  

We smiled at each other and shouted, “Don’t worry! That’s just Matthew!!”