We woke up very early on the morning of September 5th as a long day of driving and two borders crossings were ahead of us. The same taxi who dropped us couple of days before picked us up and drove us to the Zimbabwean immigration. The exit was easy, and another driver was waiting for us on the Botswana side to bring us back to the guesthouse where we had left our car.

Hello again Namibia

Our car had passed the 36,000km mark, so our rental agent asked us to stop at a Toyota dealer to service the car. Unfortunately, it could not be done on the spot, and we had to abort the operation. The agent managed to schedule two days after in a town of Northern Namibia, which was way more aligned with our own itinerary.

We stopped at Kasane to resupply fuel and groceries, visited couple of places we had not seen before, and headed towards Namibia. We were only few kilometres away when the police stopped us. Eff had been driving a bit too fast, and we had to turn around to go and pay for a speed ticket at the station. No need to  say that there was a bit of tension on the driver’s side!! Not only he was upset for being fined, but he was also worried for the unnecessary waste of time. Well… That’s part of any adventure, isn’t it? Once this little detail settled, it was time to restart our 460km journey to Ngepi, located at the end of the Caprivi Strip. At midday, we were leaving Botswana to enter back into Namibia exactly one month after we exited it. Time had flown sooo fast!!

The Caprivi strip is a long stretch of land located on the North East part of Namibia. It is bordered by Botswana to the South and by Angola and Zambia to the North. We drove all day to get to Divundu on the Western side of the strip. This part of the country is surprisingly populated. There are many villages along the road, each with a small number of huts and fenced areas for cattle. This plus very good road conditions, it was already a big change compared to Botswana. The only downside was the cows’ discipline level… If they were very careful in Botswana, they really behaved like queens  of the road in Namibia and were crossing anywhere and anytime, completely oblivious of the traffic. We stopped couple of times to stretch our legs and take some pictures of road signs to complete our collection, and we arrived at destination at the end of the afternoon.

Relaxing time at Ngepi

The place we had decided to stop and relax at for couple of days was Ngepi, a camp run by locals located along the Kavango river near the Mahango Game reserve. We ditched the tent for another couple of nights to settle in a very nice open-air  hut in the trees. As we arrived a bit late, we decided to relax in the common areas first, having drinks and dinner there, before heading to our hut for the night. I understood straight away why the staff laughed at me when I had asked for the keys at the reception: there was no door… Only a big deck overlooking the river, and an inviting bed under the thatched roof. We let ourselves fall into sleep, soothed by the lullabies of hippos.

The following morning was exactly as planned, chilling out, relaxing, reading and writing a bit, while observing elephants and impalas coming to the river to drink. It was a perfect day of doing nothing. Well, not an entire day though as Eff wanted to go and explore the nearby National Park for an afternoon self-drive. It was less than 10 kilometres away and the loop inside was supposed to be quite easy and short. My motivation level went up at the gate when the rangers told us that a leopard with a kill had been spotted in the last couple of days. As leopards stay several days in the same tree after their kill, our hopes for a good sighting were high. Eff drove super slowly to allow us to scan every single tree. Unfortunately we didn’t see anything apart from some elephants on the way and some baboons playing in a dry waterhole, so we turned around and continued the loop along the river. The rest of the drive was quite nice scenery-wise. There were many baobabs along the way, and beautiful colours on the river. We enjoyed the park until the gate closing time, and went back to our hut for a last relaxed evening. Excitement for our upcoming adventure was building up.

The following day was a transit day to Etosha, Namibia’s most famous National Park for safari, and one of the highlights of our two-month itinerary. First we stopped in Rundu where the car service was booked. We spent couple of hours there waiting for the car to be ready and doing a bit of resupply. As it turned out, our shock absorbers had a leak, and all of a sudden we understood why it had been increasingly bumpy on the sand tracks. They refilled the liquid to get us going, but the rental agent decided not to get it completely fixed, and that we could continue like this for the rest of the trip. Hummm… ok… if you say so…

We had a quick lunch and continued our long way to Etosha. At 4pm, we were entering Etosha through the Namutoni gate on the Eastern side. It was the beginning of an exciting new chapter!

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