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Taken from the SA 4 x4 January 2013 edition. If you wish to read more and subscribe click on the link. The adventure takes place in the south west corner of Zambia. Unfortunately I cannot post any photos of some really spectacular scenery.
Our tyres churned through the soft sand as we raced the setting sun. With an hour to find our Katuli
Pools wilderness campsite, we forged ahead, guided by nothing more than a GPS waypoint and our noses. Phil was putting our Cruiser through its paces along an old sandy tweespoor track.
Sliding the vehicle around a sharp bend, we came to a sudden, shuddering standstill. I looked up from the GPS to see our route blocked; curious canids littered To hell with the setting sun. There was no way any sane lover of wildlife would even contemplate moving on from one of Africa’s rarest sightings: an inquisitive pack of endangered Wild Dogs.
A couple of the adults came over to investigate the vehicles, while six pups – having quite likely never seen people or vehicles before – scampered around behind them. This epic canine encounter was a good omen, and set the tone for our much-anticipated exploration of the seldom-visited Katuli Pools area adjacent to Sioma Ngwezi National Park.
A couple of days earlier, when we had reached Kongola on the Trans-Caprivi Highway, we had decided to test out the new Singalamwe border post that we’d heard was open alongside the Kwando River. Turning off the tarred road shortly after the police check-point, our 2-vehicle convoy travelled north along a recently constructed all-weather road towards the Namibia-Zambia frontier. However, when the new road abruptly terminated in the middle of nowhere, we had to retreat in order to source local information about Namibian exit formalities. After backtracking 17 kilometres, and with the assistance of some friendly locals, we eventually located the Namibian ‘immigration table’ perched under a shady tree overlooking the meandering river!
In contrast, the Zambian side sported some freshly painted, fancy-looking immigration offices, but no road yet. So it came as no real surprise when we later learnt that we were, in fact, the first international visitors to make use of the new KAZA tourist facility, which had only opened a month before. But, far from being a frustrating experience, unravelling the mysteries of Singalamwe proved an enjoyable and entertaining adventure in itself.
With a smile and a flamboyant salute, the gate guard removed the pole blocking the sandy track into Zambia, allowing us to enter Sioma Ngwezi National Park in the south of the Sisheke Chiefdom. Fortuitously situated in the central northern sector of the recently created 444 000 km² Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA), the Chiefdom’s prime location within Africa’s largest conservation area makes it a vital link in the old animal migration routes between Chobe National Park in Botswana and Kafue National Park in Zambia. We had heard that excessive human settlement along the Kwando River, and a lack of water in the east of the park, had pushed most of the surviving wildlife to the grassy plains in the northwest of the park; so we decided that that was where we should base ourselves for the coming days.
Sioma Ngwezi National Park has been neglected for decades. Having long been the refuge and larder for a succession of guerrilla armies fighting bush wars in neighbouring Namibia and Angola, it seemed remarkable that any wildlife could have survived this purging. Yet, as we explored the park’s few drivable roads, detouring to investigate any natural pans we came across, we saw a surprising variety of wild herbivores:giraffe, eland, sable, roan, kudu, tsessebe, reedbuck, impala,duiker, steenbok and warthog. Although signs of elephant littered the landscape, these heavily persecuted creatures eluded us by day.
With the limited road infrastructure, and with dense Miombo woodland dominating much of Sioma, we were compelled to exit the park in the northeast and then re-enter from the northwest at Silumbu entry point. The traditional Zambian gate – a tree hacked down and thrust across the road – alerted us to the presence of a Zambian Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) checkpoint. Although we were almost definitely the first – and quite possibly the only – tourists to enter through this ‘gate’ for the season, the ZAWA personnel were in no hurry to throw down the red carpet. It was clear that we were now on ‘Africa time’.
After lazily swatting a couple of flies, the ZAWA crew roused themselves to tackle the task at hand. At the head of the column was a rather officious-looking ZAWA lady. Hauling herself up, she pulled on a skew beret before waddling over to the boom, brandishing the 2008/2009 entry fees schedule in her left hand and an ancient-looking receipt book in her right.
She slid her finger down to ‘foreigner’ and announced, “You must pay me US$5 per person per night and US$15 for each of the motor vehicles.” I politely enquired if I might consult her well-preserved
price list before pointing out that, as South Africans, we should actually be paying SADC rates. “That doesn’t matter … You are white, so you are a foreigner!” she replied, without a trace of humour in her voice.
After thrashing the SADC topic around for a couple of minutes and making absolutely no headway, we decided that making a fuss over a couple of dollars really wasn’t worth it,especially after watching her painstakingly fill out our official receipt in triplicate. The money was going to a very good cause
and the bureaucratic paperwork gave me hope that some of our dollars might actually find their way back to preserving this threatened wilderness.
Although the ZAWA personnel stationed at Sioma Ngwezi have traditionally focused their attention on revenue collection at the expense of regular and effective anti-poaching work, all this seems set to change with the park’s incorporation into the KAZA TFCA. Although for years they have been woefully
ill-equipped and understandably unwilling to risk their lives against well-armed poachers from Angola, the presence of Flip Nel and Errol Petersen, Peace Parks’ technical advisors for the park, and a generous €2.2 million KfW grant should go a long way towards changing this attitude. With the purchase of new Land Cruisers, fuel and patrol equipment, as well as improved training, it is hoped that the ZAWA scouts can expand their patrol coverage and improve their efficacy in dealing with the
poaching pandemic, the illegal sawmills and the uncontrolled veld-burning that threaten the park’s survival.
Sioma Ngwezi is a genuinely wild area. And the reason it remains devoid of tourists is simply because nobody knows about it. Instead of stopping to explore this stunning tract of unmapped African wilderness, 4x4 enthusiasts typically bypass it en route to better known wildlife destinations such
as Liuwa or the Busanga Plains in Kafue. Their oversight leaves a ‘private park’ to the fortunate few who crave uncharted territory.
True off-road adventurers thrive in wild areas where one needs to be completely self-sufficient; and Sioma, with absolutely no tourist facilities, it just that: a wild tract of African bush where one can camp alongside a natural pan and spot wildlife coming down to drink, but not see another tourist or vehicle for weeks. Barotseland pioneer Gavin Johnson, of Mutemwa Camp
on the Upper Zambezi, was the man who first alerted us to the beautiful Katuli Pools area where we now found ourselves camped. As it turned out, the Wild Dogs were denning no more than a couple of kilometres from our idyllic wilderness campsite. We pitched our tents under a huge, shady Jackalberry
tree alongside a small natural pan,and judging by the plethora of prints embedded in the soft mud around its fringes, it was clearly a very popular watering hole indeed.
On the first night, the whooping of a nearby hyena awoke me around 04h00. Looking out the tent window, I saw – by the light of a full moon – the ghostly shapes of elephants nervously approaching the water to drink. I savoured the surreal sight of these gigantic apparitions until the breeze swirled, and the behemoths, sensing something wasn’t quite right, turned and melted back into the bush like giant wraiths.
A couple of nights later, as our colleagues retired to their tents after a delicious lamb-chop and boerewors braai, Mike and I found ourselves seated alone next to the glowing embers of a dying campfire. It was 22h30. We were enjoying a final glass of red wine as we manfully solved the world’s problems when Mike suddenly went quiet. The unmistakable sound of noisy lapping drifted across the waterhole. I fumbled for the flashlight, desperately trying not to spill my wine in the process. The dull torch beam bouncing off the water illuminated two African Wild Dogs drinking greedily. Behind them a jumble of golden eyes bobbed up and down as the rest of the pack emerged from the bush and made its way down to the pan. Mesmerised by the sight of nine adult dogs enthusiastically quenching their
thirst barely 30 metres away, I felt as if I had died and gone to heaven. Equally in awe, Mike pinched me before adding, “So we really aren’t dreaming!” The dogs stayed only five minutes, but it was an extraordinary experience that neither of us will forget.
Our tyres churned through the soft sand as we raced the setting sun. With an hour to find our Katuli
Pools wilderness campsite, we forged ahead, guided by nothing more than a GPS waypoint and our noses. Phil was putting our Cruiser through its paces along an old sandy tweespoor track.
Sliding the vehicle around a sharp bend, we came to a sudden, shuddering standstill. I looked up from the GPS to see our route blocked; curious canids littered To hell with the setting sun. There was no way any sane lover of wildlife would even contemplate moving on from one of Africa’s rarest sightings: an inquisitive pack of endangered Wild Dogs.
A couple of the adults came over to investigate the vehicles, while six pups – having quite likely never seen people or vehicles before – scampered around behind them. This epic canine encounter was a good omen, and set the tone for our much-anticipated exploration of the seldom-visited Katuli Pools area adjacent to Sioma Ngwezi National Park.
A couple of days earlier, when we had reached Kongola on the Trans-Caprivi Highway, we had decided to test out the new Singalamwe border post that we’d heard was open alongside the Kwando River. Turning off the tarred road shortly after the police check-point, our 2-vehicle convoy travelled north along a recently constructed all-weather road towards the Namibia-Zambia frontier. However, when the new road abruptly terminated in the middle of nowhere, we had to retreat in order to source local information about Namibian exit formalities. After backtracking 17 kilometres, and with the assistance of some friendly locals, we eventually located the Namibian ‘immigration table’ perched under a shady tree overlooking the meandering river!
In contrast, the Zambian side sported some freshly painted, fancy-looking immigration offices, but no road yet. So it came as no real surprise when we later learnt that we were, in fact, the first international visitors to make use of the new KAZA tourist facility, which had only opened a month before. But, far from being a frustrating experience, unravelling the mysteries of Singalamwe proved an enjoyable and entertaining adventure in itself.
With a smile and a flamboyant salute, the gate guard removed the pole blocking the sandy track into Zambia, allowing us to enter Sioma Ngwezi National Park in the south of the Sisheke Chiefdom. Fortuitously situated in the central northern sector of the recently created 444 000 km² Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA), the Chiefdom’s prime location within Africa’s largest conservation area makes it a vital link in the old animal migration routes between Chobe National Park in Botswana and Kafue National Park in Zambia. We had heard that excessive human settlement along the Kwando River, and a lack of water in the east of the park, had pushed most of the surviving wildlife to the grassy plains in the northwest of the park; so we decided that that was where we should base ourselves for the coming days.
Sioma Ngwezi National Park has been neglected for decades. Having long been the refuge and larder for a succession of guerrilla armies fighting bush wars in neighbouring Namibia and Angola, it seemed remarkable that any wildlife could have survived this purging. Yet, as we explored the park’s few drivable roads, detouring to investigate any natural pans we came across, we saw a surprising variety of wild herbivores:giraffe, eland, sable, roan, kudu, tsessebe, reedbuck, impala,duiker, steenbok and warthog. Although signs of elephant littered the landscape, these heavily persecuted creatures eluded us by day.
With the limited road infrastructure, and with dense Miombo woodland dominating much of Sioma, we were compelled to exit the park in the northeast and then re-enter from the northwest at Silumbu entry point. The traditional Zambian gate – a tree hacked down and thrust across the road – alerted us to the presence of a Zambian Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) checkpoint. Although we were almost definitely the first – and quite possibly the only – tourists to enter through this ‘gate’ for the season, the ZAWA personnel were in no hurry to throw down the red carpet. It was clear that we were now on ‘Africa time’.
After lazily swatting a couple of flies, the ZAWA crew roused themselves to tackle the task at hand. At the head of the column was a rather officious-looking ZAWA lady. Hauling herself up, she pulled on a skew beret before waddling over to the boom, brandishing the 2008/2009 entry fees schedule in her left hand and an ancient-looking receipt book in her right.
She slid her finger down to ‘foreigner’ and announced, “You must pay me US$5 per person per night and US$15 for each of the motor vehicles.” I politely enquired if I might consult her well-preserved
price list before pointing out that, as South Africans, we should actually be paying SADC rates. “That doesn’t matter … You are white, so you are a foreigner!” she replied, without a trace of humour in her voice.
After thrashing the SADC topic around for a couple of minutes and making absolutely no headway, we decided that making a fuss over a couple of dollars really wasn’t worth it,especially after watching her painstakingly fill out our official receipt in triplicate. The money was going to a very good cause
and the bureaucratic paperwork gave me hope that some of our dollars might actually find their way back to preserving this threatened wilderness.
Although the ZAWA personnel stationed at Sioma Ngwezi have traditionally focused their attention on revenue collection at the expense of regular and effective anti-poaching work, all this seems set to change with the park’s incorporation into the KAZA TFCA. Although for years they have been woefully
ill-equipped and understandably unwilling to risk their lives against well-armed poachers from Angola, the presence of Flip Nel and Errol Petersen, Peace Parks’ technical advisors for the park, and a generous €2.2 million KfW grant should go a long way towards changing this attitude. With the purchase of new Land Cruisers, fuel and patrol equipment, as well as improved training, it is hoped that the ZAWA scouts can expand their patrol coverage and improve their efficacy in dealing with the
poaching pandemic, the illegal sawmills and the uncontrolled veld-burning that threaten the park’s survival.
Sioma Ngwezi is a genuinely wild area. And the reason it remains devoid of tourists is simply because nobody knows about it. Instead of stopping to explore this stunning tract of unmapped African wilderness, 4x4 enthusiasts typically bypass it en route to better known wildlife destinations such
as Liuwa or the Busanga Plains in Kafue. Their oversight leaves a ‘private park’ to the fortunate few who crave uncharted territory.
True off-road adventurers thrive in wild areas where one needs to be completely self-sufficient; and Sioma, with absolutely no tourist facilities, it just that: a wild tract of African bush where one can camp alongside a natural pan and spot wildlife coming down to drink, but not see another tourist or vehicle for weeks. Barotseland pioneer Gavin Johnson, of Mutemwa Camp
on the Upper Zambezi, was the man who first alerted us to the beautiful Katuli Pools area where we now found ourselves camped. As it turned out, the Wild Dogs were denning no more than a couple of kilometres from our idyllic wilderness campsite. We pitched our tents under a huge, shady Jackalberry
tree alongside a small natural pan,and judging by the plethora of prints embedded in the soft mud around its fringes, it was clearly a very popular watering hole indeed.
On the first night, the whooping of a nearby hyena awoke me around 04h00. Looking out the tent window, I saw – by the light of a full moon – the ghostly shapes of elephants nervously approaching the water to drink. I savoured the surreal sight of these gigantic apparitions until the breeze swirled, and the behemoths, sensing something wasn’t quite right, turned and melted back into the bush like giant wraiths.
A couple of nights later, as our colleagues retired to their tents after a delicious lamb-chop and boerewors braai, Mike and I found ourselves seated alone next to the glowing embers of a dying campfire. It was 22h30. We were enjoying a final glass of red wine as we manfully solved the world’s problems when Mike suddenly went quiet. The unmistakable sound of noisy lapping drifted across the waterhole. I fumbled for the flashlight, desperately trying not to spill my wine in the process. The dull torch beam bouncing off the water illuminated two African Wild Dogs drinking greedily. Behind them a jumble of golden eyes bobbed up and down as the rest of the pack emerged from the bush and made its way down to the pan. Mesmerised by the sight of nine adult dogs enthusiastically quenching their
thirst barely 30 metres away, I felt as if I had died and gone to heaven. Equally in awe, Mike pinched me before adding, “So we really aren’t dreaming!” The dogs stayed only five minutes, but it was an extraordinary experience that neither of us will forget.