Hauptbahnhofundhopp

After 3 full days of this…

the whole flatness and vastness of land thing was beginning to wear thin, so I was extremely relieved to see some more varied landscapes as we moved south and out of Etosha.

At Okaukuejo, we finally got a chance to view some game at night. Basically, you just sit and wait for the animals to come  for the nightly pool party. Sound easier than it is when the temperature drops to 4 degrees at night.

Note the elegant drinking stance of the Giraffe. Also highly entertaining: Rhinos are really ill-tempered bastards, with all manner of roaring and grunting and attacking and counter-attacking. All the while the Elephants were quietly enjoying a drink and glancing over at the Rhinos occasionally and tsk, tsk-ing.

The story of the 2 German tourists who were eaten, after falling asleep at the waterhole, by a lion a few years ago also served to lighten the mood. Always looking on the bright side, one fellow traveller suggested “So if we put 2 Germans by the waterhole in sleeping bags, the lions will come. Perfect!” (Haha, Ernie, but not if your snoring scares them away. Zing!)

Despite wearing pretty much every stitch of clothing I had brought with me, no amount of tea and rum (also known as Namibian Coffee) could hold off hypothermia for ever, so I gave up around 1 o’clock, about an hour before the Lions showed up. Heard them roaring from my tent, though.

Day two in Etosha, we got back on the bus and visited some more waterholes on the way to Halali camp.

Here’s what the waterholes in the camps look like. Kind of a nice reversal of the traditional zoo situation, no?

After lunch, some more game viewing and on to Okaukuejo. Behold the Warthog and the awesomely named Wildebeest. The Warthog was my favourite animal, hands down. They do this arrogant head-held-high-tail-in-the-air walk that really says “talk to the backside”, but unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of that. Laugh at this one instead. Hakuna Matata, indeed!