17 December

17 December

Ngepi Camp – Bush Camping (Bwabwata)

82 Miles

Erik:

    Long but cool day. We entered Bwabwata park on the Caprivis strip. Everything is green green green, but flat and kind of monatonous. That was broken up by ELEPHANTS. Steph just yells STOP at me and so I skid to a halt, look left and BOOM. Elephant. 15 yards away. We were down wind so the dude just kept stuffing his face. After about 10 minutes of watching him, we decided to cycle on. Another quarter of a mile and steph yells STOP STOP STOP again. 3 more elephants. This time they caught onto the fact we were there, and were very close to the road, so we cycles slowly by. Here we realized they are afraid of us on bikes. So when the did see us they would run away doing their cute little butt wiggle into the bush. It was very cool to see, and brightened our trip significantly.

    We were shooting for staying at a catholic mission in a village, but it was a san village and the mission was buried pretty far into the village. We didnt get a good vibe from it so we rode on. At about 5 we stopped and made dinner at a rest stop. There was a car that had slowly followed us from the village and was just sitting there watching us. He drove up and stared at us while we were eating. This made us quite nervous, but I just waved at him and smiled. He eventually drove off (thank goodness) and we immediately started cycling again. It was a bit nerve racking trying to find a safe place to camp as the sun was setting, thinking about if that dude came back or something. We found a depression off the side of the road and it was invisible to people, and had no signs of elephant around. We got the tent up and unloaded just before it started pouring rain.