Adventure Travel the World, with Style, on a Budget: Game Drives to Mahengo National Park

Game Drive in Mahango National Park

Very close to Ngepi are two parks, Mahango and Bwabwata which are currently joined together, according to the Ranger at Mahang.

Mahango is about 15 km south of
Ngepi and Bwabwata is across the river from both Ngepi and Mahango, so the wildlife there
can be seen from Ngepi and some of the animals pass back and forth between the two parks.

To go on game drives from Ngepi into Mahango Park, there must be at least 4 people for them
to set up a drive. We were not having much luck getting a game drive arranged so we decided
to do our own "intrepid adventure to the game park". We set off walking from the camp to
the main road, were picked up halfway and taken to the entrance to the park. We have done
this before and you wait, enjoy the birds at the water pool by the entrance, and visit with
the guard.

The guard at the entrance this time was interested in birds, had actually done a course in
wildlife and so helped us spot some of the birds around the entrance. She also told us some
interesting stories of different birds, life in the village, and life in general in Namibia.

Finally at about 2:00 in the afternoon, a safari vehicle from another camp arrived with
only one passenger. The guard convinced the driver he should take us into the park. We had
a very nice day, seeing wildebeest, a magnificant male kudu, hippo out of the water, elephants
eating palm leaves and roan. This park is one of the few places where you can see both roan
and sable antelope. We also saw a young Bateleur on the ground who then flew up into the tree
and posed for us for awhile!

This park is also a very good bargain for the person doing self drives. The entrance fee is
40 Namibian dollars for international travelers and there is not a fee for the vehicle.
Another interesting thing about the park is the main road in the park goes directly to the
border with Botswana. As a result, if you enter Namibia through that gate, you can have a
mini-game drive as you enter Namibia!

We were able to go on two more game drives while we were there, one with Ngepi camp and one
with people camped next to us who invited us to go along with them. On the game drive from
Ngepi, they took us out the back way past the village where many of the workers live and
then out to the main road. Christopher was along and was able to talk about some of the
animals and their habits. He also is incredible about being able to see things long
before most of us can! That day we did see both sable and roan and were quite happy about
that.

The people we went with the last day wanted to see elephants, and he was quite into birds
so was quite happy to stop and look at birds as we went along. We drove the entire length
of the 4x4 track but did not see much wildlife. It was interesting to see the topography
change as we went along the track. We were successful in seeing elephants and even more
exciting were the wattled cranes. This is the third time we have seen them in our trips
to this park.