Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Guest entry - Dan (on Etosha NP)

14 Feb 2011
Valetine's Day at Etosha

Our two-day visit to Etosha National Park started with spotting a few animals on the way in, mainly zebras, springboks, giraffes, ostriches and oryx before arriving at the campsite and heading straight for the pool (how most of us now wash)! We headed back out on the truck for a game drive in the late afternoon in the hope of seeing more animals – though we all knew that there wasn't a massive chance of seeing anything cos all the animals were seeking shade. We did see some of all the previously mentioned animals and our first lion of the tour. He was cotching under a tree not doing very much until some thunder sounded and he stirred a little bit, allowing those with good zooms on their cameras to get some pretty decent pictures.

Back at camp we sat down for a three course dinner. Firstly soup which was followed by, rather appropriately, kudu steaks which tasted amazing. For dessert we had cheesecake – not 'broken biscuit pancakes' as I had naively believed when asking Emma what she was breaking biscuits for. Dumb! After dinner we all went down to the watering hole in the hope of some animals wanting to join us for a drink or two or three... we sat for a while and saw nothing then all of a sudden a rhino emerged from the horizon. It went for a dip in the water enough that when it got out it was like a two-tone rhino. It was accompanied by a smaller animal that none of us could actually identify. It came almost up to the wall that we were sat behind - the most action that any of us got this Valentine's Day!


Back by the tents a few of us sat around saw a jackal interested in something so we naturally got closer and found out it was a snake. We tried taunting it and feeding it a beetle but it wasn't having any of it. Still we fun throwing things at a beetle to try and get the snake to eat it. The next day we were told it was pretty poisonous! All in all a pretty good day.

No comments:

Post a Comment