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Etosha National Park a vast pan consisting of 20 000 square kilometres of land and home to a vast array of animals. We were to spend the next two days and nights within this park boundary putting to use our animal spotting skills, brilliant.
So we headed to our first camp Namutoni, now Martina had told us that if we were to spot anything we should press the buzzer to let her know so we could stop. So imagine my excitement when we had not been in the park more than five minutes when I spotted a giraffe but in my excitement I fell over as I went to press the buzzer and we missed it!! Martina and Billy didnt seem to concerned that we had missed this giraffe because as it ecame apparent later there are hundreds of them around. However not to take away from my skills as a wildlife spotter I reckon I could give Bill Oddie or David Bellamy a run for their money he he!
So we set up camp amongst the family of mongoose and a few jackals that were scavenging around and headed out on a game drive. Now it really does pay to have adriver who has been doing the job for a while he was like an encyclopedia... a fountain of knowledge and well he could spot things that we would not have seen for toffee!! We had a brilliant afternoon game viewing we saw Zebra, Giraffe (lots of them) kudu, impala, hartbeest, tortoise, buffalo, a lioness and her cubs hiding under a bush from the scorching afternoon sun, lotsof birds, my favourite one is called the secretary bird, we just called it the high heel shoe bird because the way it walked was hilarious, well it made me laugh anyway its worth coming to etosha just to see them I think!. We also saw elephants too ut the highlight of the afternoon had to be when one of the group spotted some lions sat on a idge looking down over the vast desert pan soaking up the last few rays of sun, there must have been about 5 or 6 of them.
after watching them for a while we headed backto the campsite to catc sunset from the campsites white washed fort, it was beautiful. After a good feed we went to the waterhole baed at the cmpsite where we saw to lions walk into the bush and there was an amazing storm too. We headed back to the tents before they blew away.
The next morning we packed everything away early s the sun was still rising and headed off for some more game viewing. Our destination was a second campsite which in the end took approximately ten hours to get to which included dtops for lunch and ame viewing. We saw more giraffe, I love giraffe and zebra but perhaps the highlight of the day was when we saw an older lioness and two younger ones who were obviously intruding on the older ones territory and we thought there was going to be some sort of face off but the older lioness was smart and stayed within the safety of all the trucks, in a way i suppose that is kind of how humans interfere with nature but it was exciting to see all the same despite the stupid tourists on the crazy kudu bus who insisted on hanging out of the window...... who does that!!! I mean do they want an encounter of the closest kind or what, they were very annoying and very noisy.
Once we got to the second camp after a long days driving we set up camp and then sat down by the water hole for sunset. What a treat we got too, I was so amazed when 3 elephants came down to the water for a drink but then in the distance a cloud of smoke was evolving and 40 or so elephants were making their way down to the water hole, honestly the hairs on the back of my nexk were standing on end as the elpehants drank and washed each other. they must have been there for an hour and then the rare black rhino came down to join them. Now it was apparent they were not bosom buddies but they tolerated him. I would after all he does have a huge horn on the end of his nose that could just hurt slightly if impaled into your stomach perhaps.
After such a treat and a good feed and a little more wildlife viewing we all headed off to bed as the next morning was an early start. And what an early start it was the sun rising into the sky, we jumped onto the truck to go for a short game drive before setting off for swakopumund. We were hoping that we would see a leopard but despite our intense leopard looking we failed to spot any. We did however see two hyena skulking around the place. The way they move is quite interesting you would think that they would get neck ache the way they mope around. We also saw a heck of a lot of guinea fowl, which I might add never fail to amuse me. Heading back to the camp we packed up and set off for our next destination, this wasnt before however i almost went flying through the windscreen as the driver sharply pushed on the brakes so that we could see the ostrich and their chicks........ dont worry no permenant injury was sustained!
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