Popa Falls - by Ellen

We left Etosha with 3750 km on the clock, and headed to the Popa Falls, on the edge of the Caprivi Strip. There’s a ‘veterinary fence’ that separates the commercial farms in the south from the subsistence farms in the north, to prevent the spread of foot and mouth and renderpest. Once through that gate the country changes.

Cattle, people and goats wonder across the road in a leisurely fashion, and hoards of school children play their way home heart-stoppingly near the road. The road is lined with traditional huts; wooden frames and thatched roofs, each family’s plot marked out by a thatched fence palisade and each family’s livestock housed in kraals (when they weren’t wondering across the road). If one of the early explorers came back to Africa today, they probably wouldn’t see much difference in the way people were living – apart from the telegraph poles, cans of coca cola and Manchester United football tops of course.

We arrived at the camp site near the Popa Falls (though they seemed more like rapids than falls to me). The Kavango river had flooded many of the camping sites, but we found a spot that, we thought, would be safe from all but the most drastic rise in the river. After much humming and haaring, and drawing water level encroachment lines in the mud by the river bank, and deciding, on the advice of someone who seemed to know what they were talking about, that we didn’t need to move the car to the top of the slope that would turn into a mud slide if it rained, we decided to go for a wonder. We kicked our flip flops off and splashed happily through the Kavango Delta (not quite as impressive as its relative, the Okavango Delta) that passed through the camp, to go and see the falls/rapids on the other side.

As we looked around us we realized that the trees looked very familiar – yes, there was a knob thorn, and there was a sickle bush! And a silver cluster leaf! And, by golly, we could hear an emerald spotted wood dove and a duet of black collared barbets! We were home: back in the same biome in which we had done our field guide course, albeit in a different country.

After a fairly sleepless night (a branch crashed from the tree above us, missing the tent and car by mere inches, then we were woken up by a security guard who was concerned that, if it rained, our chairs might get a little damp, and then the birds started…) we emerged bleary eyed from our tent to see a group of people standing by the bit of river we’d crossed the evening before. There was obviously something not quite right. But, on the plus side, the river was exactly where it had been the evening before; it hadn’t risen in the night and swept us away. We wondered down to have a look, and there, in the waterlogged undergrowth, was a crocodile. Yes, less than 10 meters from where we had happily splashed our way through the river, was a 4-5 meter croc. ‘We’re just trying to work out if this is the one that’s usually here – it looks a bit small’ said one of the staff. ‘We think this may be a new one, so then we’re not sure where the big one is today’.

And that’s the last time I venture into a river.