One more night at Maun camp ground and then we headed to Etosha National Park. Etosha is Namibia's premier game reserve, covering over 20,000 square kilometres and has a large variety of animal and bird species. The park is situated around the Etosha Pan, and has an extensive network of gravel roads that enabled us to get to remote areas of the park. Whilst driving through the park our main highlights were the ever elusive leopard mother and her cub that was sitting on the side of the ride (a great spot by passenger Matt). She was devouring her kill that just moments before we arrived she had managed to capture. Her cub we can only guess, had already eaten it's fill and was resting under a tree just metres from her. An absolutely amazing sight. Just as we were about to head out of the park and to our campsite, Susie yelled at the top of her lungs "Rhino". Nick backed up the truck and there he was a black rhino, one of the rarest animals alive. We were so very very lucky to have seen him - many thanks to Susie and her keen eyes. He was pretty shy though and most of us only got a photo of his rear end. We were all extremely happy with the days game drive. That night we stayed at a camp ground who's main feature was a floodlit watering hole where you could sit and wait for animals to wander up and drink from. We weren't sure if we would even see anything, but boy we weren't disappointed - a huge elephant came up to drink and then proceeded to walk past us to a sugar cane plantation, which by the sound of it he almost demolished. He was literally 10 metres away from us and only an electric fence between us. Absolutely incredible !!
The next morning, after a short drive we arrived at a Cheetah park where we learnt about the conservation of the Cheetah population and met the residents Cheetahs - 3 Cheetahs that were orphaned had been raised by humans and were pretty much domesticated. We got to pet them just like you would a domesticated house cat, they were gorgeous. But still you have to remember they are wild animals and could do serious damage even when playing so we were supervised. The resident giraffe couldn't resist the attention either he wanted some of the action, so we patted and fed him too. That afternoon we hopped on the back of a trailer and went and fed the wild Cheetahs - the animal on the menu was donkey. Well actually we didn't feed the Cheetahs we stood on the back of a trailer and watched the professionals stand on the ground (no safe compounds of the trailer or a truck only a stick for protection) and throw bits of donkey up in the air for the Cheetahs to catch and eat. Awesome, something we will never forget!! Shannene took some video footage so hopefully you can get an idea just how close we were and Guy took some amazing photos. That evening after dinner we retired to the bar for a few drinks and a game of pool, actually it turned into a bit of a competition. The local guys who ran the bar (and fed the Cheetahs too) wanted in on the action too, guess they have a bit of time on their hands so figured they were pretty good, well when they brought out their pool cue we all a wee bit worried. They played the winners of our pool comp and then the losers had to take a shot of spirits that was hooked up to a warthogs back side, you had to pull the tail down for the shot to come out of it's bottom (there was loads of taxi-dermi around the bar such as elephant ears, an elephant's foot etc.) None of us were keen for it. The winners of the pool comp were Shannene and Irish Padraigh, a winning combination as they beat the local guys,no shots for them and won the competition.
The next day after a days drive we arrived in Spizkoppe, where we pitched our tents at the base of a 1,728 metre rock formation - a night under the stars (once again no shower and a long drop loo). Before dinner we went on a hike to explore the surrounding areas, view the local bushman paintings on the side of the rocks and watch another brilliant sunset from the top of a rock. A few of the guys camped out on one of the rocks and woke early to watch the sunrise.
The following morning we headed to Swakopmund. Swakopmund was founded by the Germans in 1892 and their colonial influence is still evident today. Our accommodation as part of the tour was in dormitories, yah no camping for any of us which we were all hanging out for. However you could upgrade at any extra cost if you wanted your own room. We stuck to the dorms. There were 3 rooms - 2 x 8 bed rooms and 1 x 10 bed room. Somehow we managed to find ourselves in the 10 bed room. All of these rooms had to be a fire hazard, no health and safety at all, bunk beds were packed in and once we got our back packs in as well, well it didn't leave for much room. And once you got that many people into such a small room (plus all of us had a week or more of washing to do, no one had any clean clothes at this stage) didn't make for a very pleasant smelling room either. We planned to stick it out for the first night and upgrade the next two nights. To top it all off Shannene had to ask management to clean the toilets - let's just say they were in a state that none of us could understand how anything got where it did, just think of the movie Trainspotting, now you've got the idea !! Before we checked into our dorms we watched a video on all of the optional activities we could do. We decided on sand boarding and quad biking. That evening the whole group went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant. It was a chance for us to get dressed up and let our hair down after being on the truck for so long. For an Italian restaurant it had some interesting meat on the menu, Guy had Kudu. After dinner we ended up at a local bar and danced the night away - we all pretty much took over the dance floor, good times!! The next morning saw us all a little bit hungover, but we were signed up for sand boarding - bring it on!! We chose the lay down option (neither of us have snow boarded before so figured it was the best option) -basically we threw ourselves down 30 metre high sand dunes on a piece of chip board- oh and a helmet, gloves and elbow pads for protection. The hardest part was walking back up the huge sand dunes, made especially hard when hung over. All in all we went down 7 dunes clocking up to 64 km per hour, the fastest recorded on the day was crazy Kevin at 70km per hour. We all had a great day, had to be another highlight of the trip. We were absolutely covered in sand from head to foot (Shannene's face was covered, looked like she had a 5 o'clock shadow going on) and we were finding it for many days afterwards - it definitely gets everywhere !! Make sure you check out the video.
One of the first things we all pretty much did on the first day in Swakopmund was our laundry - when we said that we didn't have any clean clothes we weren't joking. We had to go back twice to clean all of our clothes. The laundromat was great, it had a bar, a casino and a pool table, loads to keep you entertained whilst waiting for your clothes. It was so nice to have clean clothes though. That night we checked into our upgrade- we had a double room, but it also had a single bed in the room as well. So we sneakerly snuck Todd into the room and split the cost of the room3 ways. It was so nice to have our room and a proper shower with hot water and a clean toilet. We were all a bit broken from the previous nights antics so everyone had an earlyish night. The next day we had quad biking to look forward to. Shannene hadn't driven a quad bike before so she had a smaller automatic bike and Guy who had ridden before was on a bigger cc semi-automatic bike. We split up into different groups depending on our speeds and confidence - we were in two different groups as Guy was guns ahead of Shannene, however once she got her confidence she was good as gold. Once again another highlight of our trip, driving over the sand dunes was fantastic, each one so different and the sun set was beautiful. Unfortunately we didn't take a camera with us, as we thought the sand would damage it, but we hope to copy some photos from other people on the trip, so watch this space.
The following morning we packed up and headed south, driving past Walvis Bay along the Atlantic Ocean en route to Sesreim. A short distance away was Sossusviei, which was surrounded by a dramatic sea of sand dunes reputed to be the highest in the world. Home of Dune 45, about 300 metres high which we walked up, watched the sunset and ran back down. That night we camped in Sesreim and the next morning we drove to Fish River Canyon - the second largest canyon in the world although reputed to be the most spectacular. A road which ran near the eastern rim gave us access to several viewing points with spectacular views across the rift which we walked along. That night we camped at Fish River Canyon where everyone spent the last of their Namibian Rand at the bar as we were headed for South Africa.