Another early wake up today, but after a good night’s sleep I was feeling decidedly more human. The good news for me — and bad news for all the others on my tour, particularly Julie my long-suffering tentmate — was that my cold had morphed into its annoying cough phase. If it follows the pattern, I’ll probably be coughing for a few days, but I feel a whole lot better, which is the important part.
We set off on an early morning game drive before breakfast, heading back into the park. Most of the animals must not be morning people either; they were pretty quiet and we didn’t see a whole lot. Some birds, some giraffe, a few zebra… and how jaded am I that after two days on safari, I’m already blasé about giraffes and zebras? But seriously, they’re everywhere, they don’t run away when the trucks go by, and we actually started having to pass them by in order to look for other animals. At one point we almost saw a leopard; another truck was stopped by the side of the road, and the driver said he’d seen it retreat into the trees. But if it was there, it was too well hidden, and we eventually conceded defeat and moved on.
Returning to the campsite, we had breakfast and took down the tents. While the guides packed the truck, we headed off to the reception area to browse the shops. I bought my first souvenir of the trip: A beaded necklace that didn’t cost much and won’t be a pain to take home. I’m really not much of a souvenir buyer.
Back on the truck for our day-long trip from one side of Etosha to the other. And this is where the fun started. No sooner did we enter the park that we saw the United Nations of watering holes. There were zebras, springbok, giraffes and jackals all milling about taking a drink. It was a hot sunny day, but it was amazing to see so many different animals in one place.
The pattern of the day was that we drove a while until someone spotted something, at which point we would stop and take photos. We had the pop top open in the truck, and it was a scorchingly hot sunny day, but with the wind going it was bearable. Everyone is covered in a layer of dust, and it’s so dry that our hands and skin are suffering. In fact, it’s dry even by Namibian standards; last rainy season it only rained a total of six days, and the country is suffering drought conditions.
Anyway, our luck was getting better by the kilometer. We saw a few vehicles stopped in front of us, which usually meant some big game, and indeed: It was a lion. A female lion, just walking along the side of the road, actually quite close to us. Unfortunately, too many other vehicles were following her, and she retreated back into the bush. But still: A lion! In the wild! I really ought to buy a lottery ticket, I was thinking at that point.
But wait, that wasn’t all. It just got better from there. We drove along and saw more elephants, including one that crossed the road right in front of us. We saw more gemsbok, a large herd of them, right near the road, and more zebras so close to us that we could practically count their stripes.
We were driving along at quite a clip on the dirt road when George came to a quick halt: He’d spotted a cheetah in the trees. Seeing a cheetah in the wild is rare enough, but that was just the start. Closer inspection through binoculars revealed that the cheetah was a female and there were three cheetah cubs (with their funny-looking mohawk fur) curled up in the tree. The cheetah was stalking back and forth, and we scanned the area and saw some springbok nearby. This was about to get interesting. We all staked out positions in the open windows, through the pop top or — in Lukas’s case — on the roof of the safari truck as we watched to see what would happen next. The cheetah moved carefully, got startled off a couple of times, but she was seemingly determined to find dinner for her cubs. We watched as she circled widely to get upwind from her prey… and then took off at speed towards the springbok. However, they noticed about halfway there that they were in danger and took off at a gait. The cheetah’s hunt had failed.
She wandered down to the water hole to regroup, and the springbok then did the funniest thing: They started to double back towards the cheetah. Why on earth, we wondered? I could just picture the conversation among the springbok. “It was a cheetah, I’m telling you!” “Are you sure?” “Let’s check just to make sure.” “I know, let’s send Sammy, he’ll do anything.” Anyway, they got about halfway back towards the cheetah, who was just calmly watching them, and they apparently confirmed that it really was a cheetah and then took off at full speed for real.
After that, we really thought it couldn’t get any better than that. We took a break for lunch at the middle camp of the park, and then got back onto the truck for our drive to the western side to our campsite for the night. But our game viewing was far from over, when we spotted a black rhino. And then, after some more zebras and giraffes and such, we found two extremely rare white rhinos. They were just hanging out in the trees, and then they came out of the trees and crossed the road. Yes, I have a whole litany of “why did the wildlife cross the road?” jokes, with accompanying photos. George, the guide, was so impressed that even he snapped some camera phone photos.
As a fitting close to the brilliant day, we watched the sun set in the background as a pair of elephants playfully tangled trunks with one another.
We arrived at our campsite just as the sun was setting, and rushed to pitch the tents before the last light disappeared. This is by far the most crowded campsite so far; we’re basically right on top of one another, and surrounded by other campsites. But it’s okay; it’s just for the night, and we’re heading out in the morning.
We settled into our now-familiar routine of dinner, followed by sitting around the campfire with drinks. There’s a water hole at this campsite too, and a few of us wandered over to the lookout before dinner to see if we could spot anything, but other than a couple of jackals wandering around the campsite, there was nothing to be seen. After dinner, we swapped travel stories and basically concluded that, among the ten of us, we’ve pretty much been to everywhere in the world, except maybe Antarctica. If you can believe it, I’m almost the least-travelled person in the group.
Tomorrow we head into Damaraland, and there will almost surely be no internet access until we reach Swakopmund. So hopefully, this entry — and the accompanying wildlife photos — will tide you all over for a while. In case you missed it in all the descriptions of wildlife, Etosha is awesome. You must come here.