PLAYING THE ETOSHA GAME
Game spotting isn't terribly difficult in Etosha: you drive along at 60km/h and the game is visible from 500 m away. If it is hidden (a relative term, given the openness of Etosha's veld) there are half a dozen cars parked around the best spot from which to view the animals.
Within 15 minutes of entering the park we came across a herd of cars parked round a pride of lions. The male (lion, fools!) wasn't there but there were two young - they were still slightly clumsy on their feet - cubs and seven adults or sub-adults.
Along the same side road, we saw a pair of namaqua sandgrouse, beautiful birds that are easily overlooked because you think they're just another dove.
Of the 20 000 springbok in the park, I think we only saw 19 500 of them, mixed with small groups of wildebeest (blue) and, again relatively, large groups of oryx. This animal is not common in most of the game parks in Seffrica and is regarded as an exciting "spot" but in Etosha they are really common, although getting a photograph of their faces is still difficult as they seem to have an innate ability to detect whenever you take a camera out and immediately present their arses to the lens.
There were kudu, duiker, ostrich, bulbuls, blacksmith plovers, crowned plovers, northern black korhaans, yellow mongoose, ground squirrels ("If I lie here long enough with my tail flipped over my head, maybe those idiots in the car will think they just imagined me"), steppe buzzards,secretary birds, a kori bustard, purple rollers, zebra, hornbills and numerous other animals (which Lisa recorded but I'm too lazy to type in) along the way to the highlights of the day, which occurred near Namutoni.
Near one of the waterholes we came across a herd of black-faced impala, which differ from their more common cousins by having a black mask down the front of their face. They aren't at all common.
After leaving them, it was only another 500 m before we met a young leopard female which was hunting alongside the road. She wasn't too sure about us but wasn't going to move too far from the road - must have been good pickings there. She stood about 5 m off the road and leered inquisitively (slightly wary, too) at us from under the thin canopy of the trees for two or three minutes and then moved past us and down the road. When we reversed, we got another good look at her, but this time it was from about 30 m away. Cool stuff!
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It's wet work, but someone has to enjoy it!
Popa Falls: 14 December 2001
Now, where was I? ... Travelling in Africa gives you the potential to add a slight warp to the meaning of conventional phrases. I'm standing in the kitchen hut at the Popa Falls Rest Camp, listening to the sound of the Kavango River going over the falls in the background.
The term "falls" is a bit of a misnomer because they are really just a set of rapids - unless we've missed the plot entirely and there is a whopping great waterfall somewhere in the area and all we've been scouting around for the past two days is the trailer!
Our route to here has been erratic and filled with thundershowers. Our plans to get up bright and early in Outjo and speed (ha ha!) up to Etosha last Sunday (9 December) were scotched by the weather's decision to rain all Saturday night, leaving a huge puddle for us to cross when we left the tent the following morning. There really wasn't much point in going into the park in rainy weather.
So we stayed until Monday morning, when we did manage to get up early and be on the road by sunrise. The owner of the Ombinda Country Lodge (the name is far fancier than the prices) was really helpful and although it wasn't the most scenic or spectacular of camp sites, his attitude was spectacular - his helpfulness was worth every cent of the cheap camping rates (N$30 pp/night). He phoned Etosha for us to check how much rain there had been there, he offered us - FREE - the use of one of the chalets if the rain got too much for us and, best of all, he swapped our warm beers for cold ones.
Yeah, I know, it sounds like we're turning into alcoholics with giant beer boeps but cold beer seems to be the only thing that really quenches thirst in this climate. And it seems to go through your system so quickly you struggle to get vrot. It also helps to take away the taste of the 3 litres of water we are drinking each day, especially when the water comes from a borehole and has a flat, salty, brackish or just generally "yugghy" taste.
Sunday night also provided the largest flight of termite alates (the winged breeding individuals which are released from termite colonies before or after rains and which go off to start new colonies). There were thousands of them in the men's bathroom alone, all heading for the lights before drowning themselves in the basins and loos. One of the staff at the resort was collecting them "for a friend" who "probably" wanted to cook them, making a stew using hundreds of the protein-rich insects.
We reached Etosha's Okakaujo camp at about 7.30 am, which gave us about 12 hours to traverse the length of the pan and exit via Namutoni camp. Tigger behaved herself spectacularly during whole day, not growling - something she has started doing whenever there is anyone too near the truck that she doesn't approve of - at passersby or camp officials once.
While the pan is spectacular, I wasn't overly impressed by Etosha. I know that one day is nowhere near enough to appreciate the place fully and that the weather wasn't great, although it was bloody warm. The park felt like it had been laid out for tourists, with nice flat vistas and bush that was neither too high nor too dense, thus making it really easy to spot the game. I prefer something more of a challenge when game spotting. The roads were also incredibly straight for long periods.
We stopped at a picnic site on the edge of the pan for lunch, where I fell asleep for an hour on the concrete table while Lisa hung around get more and more grumpy because I could fall asleep so easily while she had to just watch. Eventually she woke me up and bullied me into carrying on earlier than the heat of the day made me keen to do.
We left the park half an hour before it closed and stopped to let mutt run around for half an hour while we had tea and a sandwich. And were treated to a really spectacular sunset - I didn't realise there were so many colours one cloud could be painted at the same time. We had to drive another 130 km to Tsumeb before camping for the night, getting to the Tsumeb municipal campsite about 9 pm.
On the way, we had one headlight blow and were blinded by dozens of other drivers who clearly believe in playing "lighting chicken", leaving their main beams on for as long as possible. One (taxi) driver thought he could get away with going straight past without changing to dipped beam, until I turned the spotlights on the roof on. It may be childish, but I really like winning the occasional power game!
Typically, it Tsumeb there was an overlander's truck, this time with a horde of young, drunken Brits on board. They weren't terribly interesting, but the tour leaders earned our sympathy. Nikky and John have been doing overland trips for the past four-and-a-half years, from Nairobi down to Cape Town mainly, and are as nuts about Africa now as they were before they started.
We ended up chatting until late into the night, with them offering us all the advice we could possibly want. We chatted until late (by Africa standards!) into the night and came away, as so often with the people we've met so far, feeling really lucky and enriched by the meeting.
Next morning we changed the headlamp bulb and enjoying another hot shower (travellers' pleasures are simple but, boy, are they enjoyable!) before stocking up on spare headlight bulbs and other essentials (food among them) before trundling off to Grootfontein and then north to Rundu.
The road to Rundu was the first time I've felt as though we are really entering "Africa", with the tarmac heading through lush woodlands with the sort of humid heat you get in Zululand and rural villages of thatch, wood and daub huts and very little sign of "civilisation" - no empty Coke cans, beer bottles or gaudy advertising signboards every 100 metres.
It was also on this road that we passed through our first two roadblocks - unsmiling military policemen intoxicated by their own sense of power and importance, backed up by polite friendly (normal) policemen who were, unfortunately, the obvious underlings in these cases. The MPs weren't hostile or particularly rude - just full of attitude.
Rundu will have to wait.
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