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Etosha Burns (Your wallet)
Favourite, our Tsumeb Wimpy Bar waitress had a look of total incredulity on her face as Angela requested her second pot of breakfast tea.
The simple phrase "I'm sorry, we're English" was all the explanation needed and Favourite moved off, visibly relieved to have solved the puzzle as to why anyone would wish to drink 4 cups of hot tea (with cold milk) with an outside shade temperature of 38C.
With a final dose of E numbers and carbs under our belt we were off to Etosha, hoping to catch the park just prior to the rains, with the game and the predators crammed around the natural and pumped waterholes scattered around the southern end of the park, below the famous Etosha pan.
During our last visit with the Kutz family of Custard Bus fame, the 3 camps of Etosha (Namutoni in the east, Halali in the middle and Okaukuejo to the west) were building sites as Namibian Wildlife Resorts Ltd (NWR) ploughed millions of Namibian dollars in to a much needed upgrade of the whole park, part of the 100th anniversary celebrations.
Sadly for us and all future visitors to Etosha, NWR capitalised on the celebrations to triple and in some cases quadruple the charges for accommodation, including camping. Predictably, on our return, the building works continue, the campsites remain overused dustbowls but you now pay N$560 (£42) per day for the privilege. Namibians are quite rightly up in arms about the price hike; they can longer visit their own national park!
The chalets and restaurants have been re-vamped and the furniture and fittings are now worthy of a London boutique hotel. The staff remain the same though and we were treated to the old frosty stare and indifference at the Von Lindquist gate, a greeting that could re-freeze Antarctica and sort out global warming overnight if bottled.
The beautiful chrome fittings in the showers and washbasins are being diligently polished with industrial strength toilet cleaner, the plumbing is already leaking and the locks on the toilet and shower doors will give up quicker than Pamela Anderson's bra straps.
The old German fort of Namutoni now boasts a steakhouse, an African fusion restaurant (no takers when we were there, 40C and they are offering ox tripe stew), craft and jewellery shops and two chill rooms (darkened lounges with black leather sofas, air-conditioned down to a blissful 16C). The effect would be good if half the hundreds of staff weren't walking around in trainers and Arsenal shirts!
The effect of all this, deliberate no doubt as NWR says the target market is high spending Europeans, is that the camps, particularly Namutoni, no longer feel anything like Africa. You find yourself longing for the disgusting ablution blocks of Moremi, Botswana; at least there you knew you were in the bush!
Fortunately we are not here for the campsites, we are here for the wildlife and scenery. On both counts Etosha produced the goods, more lion than we could count, a quick glimpse of a leopard drinking at a waterhole early one morning and the wonderful spectacle of the horizon blotted out by herds of zebra streaming in to drink.
We sat watching the Halali waterhole at night (spotlights and seating provided) and in 60 incredible minutes watched elephant then black rhino and then lion take their turn to drink.
The human encounters were equally enjoyable. At Namutoni we met Dieter, a landscape gardener from Windhoek and his New Zealand photographer friend Dean. Their knowledge and respect for the wildlife was matched by their capacity to drink whisky!
At Halali we met Marc & Paula, a British couple taking a holiday from skippering and managing a billionaire's luxury yacht. They have the most highly spec'd Landrover Defender we've ever seen, including axes in the door handle in case of "trouble".
Paula made us a lovely smelling bolognaise sauce one night. I mention the smell because we sadly didn't get to taste it. Marc took the spaghetti pan off the double gas burner and we all watched in horror as the bolognaise pan, unbalanced by the sudden removal of it's counterweight, did a back flip and deposited the culinary delight in the sand. Let's hope Marc is able to keep his employer's yacht more upright than the saucepans!
At Wolfnes waterhole we watched 2 lions and a lioness doing nothing much. Then a VW Combi van pulled up and a woman stepped out to get a better photo of the lioness. I told her there was a lion the other side of our car, hidden from her view. She reluctantly returned to the car and in gratitude I received a torrent of abuse from her husband. As you will know by now I don't dwell on people's nationalities, suffice to say the abuse sounded as though it came from a country between France and Poland, with an unfortunate habit of invading both!
We left Etosha saddened that we can't afford to come back; worried about the direction the current management is taking the place. Beside the costs, the waterholes and camps are clogged with buses, coaches, minibuses and overlander trucks (more about the latter in a future blog).
Etosha won't miss our money. It will however miss it's own citizens, especially when the European target market have moved on to the next hot African destination. Let's hope for the sake of the wildlife in Etosha that the faceless "suits" of NWR management have a re-think and realise that if they want to celebrate a 200th anniversary they need to encourage their own citizens to visit and cherish the place.
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