NAMIBIA, An odd piece of land

Our time in Namibia for this year has come to a close, just four nights along the Caprivi Strip. This piece of land is an oddity going back to when UK ran The British Protectorate of Bechuanaland (Now Botswana) and Germany ran German South West Africa (Now Namibia). In a carve up in the late 19^th and early 20^th century a tiny strip of land a few miles wide was given to Germany to enable them access to the Zambezi river and named after a German Count. Besides that is was the front line protecting this part of the world during the fairly recent Angolan Civil War. During that time much of the wildlife was eradicated and is now only starting to come back. The area is beautiful with rivers and wetlands as well as the drier areas plus lots of wooded land and riverine forests.

We stayed in a great camp for the first two nights with full facilities including internet, and a restaurant and for the second we drove down a 14 km track through sand, only accessible to 4x4 vehicles to arrive at a really peaceful place and run by the local community. This is Nambwa campsite where good toilet and shower facilities, complete with hot and cold water are supplied but no electricity or anything else. Today we were sitting by the river having lunch at our site. I had set the camera up with food in front to attract the local birds, of which there are many. I had the camera on a remote release when out of the water pops a fully grown Hippo. Never seen Jan or I move so quickly into the car leaving the camera and lunch to take its own chances. Hippo walks the other way so I retrieve the camera, clear lunch and table quickly ( well the beer and the wine as that is precious). It took a few minutes to change from a wide angle lens to the 500mm and then off in pursuit of the hippo for photos and video

Not often you see a hippo on land in the day let alone just a few metres from where we were sitting.