Today we went to the Augrabies Falls on the Orange River and I skied. It was very hard, as I kept falling down, but in the end I prevailed and did it. The falls are very large ones and they are famous for the lizards that sit on the rocks and do pushups and other exercises.

Back to water skiing. I didn’t fall as much as I did yesterday, but as with yesterday, JJ pulled me on his jetski. There was a pattern, though; for every time that I fell, I did well one time. There are no stairs from the bottom of the canyon up to the view points, so you have to pretty much rock climb to get to the top again.

Ok, your imagination has probably gone wild by now, and that was my point. But now that I’ve had my fun, I’ll tell you the real facts. We did go to the waterfall and stayed there for a while, but we did NOT even touch the water, even though it was the same river that runs by the place in which we are staying. When we got back, I skied and did one full loop without falling three times, two times in a row, the other one was a different round.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Today I went water skiing. In all actuality, this was my first time, but I like to think that I’m an old hand when it comes to skiing on the water. As it happens, since today is a Monday, the water-space was clear so there was only the wake of the jet-ski that was pulling me.

When you look at a good water-skier, you see that they get up out of the water quickly and go around and around, across the wake and back, until they are done and go back to the dock. Well, it looks so easy, but I have firsthand experience saying that it is not easy. For one, you have to get your balance just right so that you don’t fall forward or backward, and two, you have to hang on.

When I started with JJ in the jet-ski, he went fast and I fell. That happened a lot before I finally learned something and got out of the water but forgot to stand up more, so I was squatting on the skis, I fell. This went on for some time before I finally got up out of the water and skied a ways before falling down again. When I finished, I had almost done a full turn.

If my father puts the pictures up, you will see that Eryn and I went around and around in an inner tube in the river, however, what you don’t know is what it feels like. I’ll tell you, shall I?

You are on the tube and hanging on for dear life, the boat that is pulling you seems to be going faster and faster, suddenly, you are at the corner, the most dangerous part, and hang on and try not to flip over or fall off until they finish turning. When they finish turning, you go across their wake and seemingly fly across the water in the air, before falling back down with an ear-splitting crack to the water.

That is the main thing that happens when you are in the inner tube behind the boat. Mainly, if you don’t hang on tight enough and don’t balance correctly, you fall off. Today I fell off a lot, but each time I learned something new so that I could ride for a longer period of time the next time.

That’s all for now, Folks!

The river outside the Waterfront Guestfarm is called the Orange River. The problem is, it isn’t orange, it’s green. That was fine though, all said and done, because it wasn’t that cold.

We started out this day going to church, and after a service, we left and said goodbye to all of the people at the church (about a dozen) and headed back to our guestfarm. When we came back, I saw some boys going into a boat, and looked down forlornly on them, hoping that one of them would see me and invite me to go with them on the innertube that was being dragged around from the back of the boat. They didn’t do that, but when I continued looking forlornly, the son of the host invited me to ride on the back of his jetski with him. I did that, and that was fun. When I got back, as soon as I started to sit down, I got invited to ride on the back of the same boat that I saw earlier. This time, they had their sister Carly with them, and Peter, Carly, and I all rode for a while.

By the time that they had to go, Eryn had ridden (and fallen off) and I had ridden a lot and made some new friends.

That’s all for now, Folks!

There was some sort of fiesta today, but since we aren’t in a Spanish speaking country, it wouldn’t be called a fiesta. Nor would siesta be called siesta…maybe nap, or rest. In any case, we went to some sort of fiesta today at the new place that at which we are staying. The place is called the Waterfront Guestfarm, and every year they host an annual party. I guess it was our luck that brought us here on that one day in a year.

After driving for 2.5 hours and taking naps for some of the time, we arrived in Upington and went to the mall. At the mall, we went to several stores to look for items of which we were in need. We bought the always-needed candy, sunglasses for Eryn and mother, and more data for the phones. After doing that, we continued to the guestfarm in which we are staying.

When we got to the parking lot, it was full of cars and we had to go around to the back to get parking space. As I said before, it was an annual event that the family hosts every year and we were lucky to come on that day. After checking in, we went to our rooms and went to dinner, which we had at the party. We ate chicken and ice cream and I drank an appletizer before we went back inside to the warmth of the rooms to go to bed.

That’s all for now, Folks!

We saw another leopard today, and like most of the pictures that everybody has, it was sitting in a tree. Most of the time he (or she) was laying down on a branch, but from time to time, it twitched. My father commented on how it would be fun to be a leopard; take a nap all day and tease tourists with giant cameras by being still until the tourists are about to leave and then twitching, making them try to turn back on their cameras and start shooting at the slightly different posture.

Today we also saw several lions, and tried to get pictures of some, but most of them were in the bush, way at the back. However, when we went on our routine evening drive, we saw a lioness that was sitting on the outside of a piece of bush that she was hiding in earlier that day.

As an afterthought, I would hate to half to walk across the bush all day, because lions can be 3 meters from where you are standing and still be perfectly camouflaged.

Well, we saw lions, but for bears and tigers, they were as scarce as boar feathers, if you get my drift. If not, then what I mean for you to understand is that we didn’t see any. Not at all surprising though, considering that tigers and bears don’t live in Southern Africa, or at least they didn’t when I last checked. Still, however, as I said in the first sentence, we saw lions.

In all actuality, we only saw two, but since we saw those two four different times, it seems like there were more. It was a pair of lions, male and female, and the male one wasn’t that old, so didn’t have one of those giant black manes that the lions of the Kalahari do, but still there was some dark hair in the mane. He and his female were, um, procreating, to put it one way, and stayed in that area all day.

We also saw an African Wildcat, which are about the size of a regular cat, and some people cross-breed them with normal cats. However, the one we saw was, as far as I know, pure bred. It had black stripes on its legs up to the knees, and was gray all over besides that.

That’s all for now, Folks!

It was running away from us at the time, but we still got some okay pictures. We were going up the side of the river when I said in a somewhat bored tone, “Oh look, there’s a cheetah.”

And my mother was like “Where, where, where, let’s take a picture!!!!!!”

But by the time the cameras were rolling, it was moving up and out.

Later that day, when we were driving back from yet another drive, having seen nothing new, really, after stopping to comment on the dead giraffe, we saw a car hailing us, saying that there was a pair of lions up one kilometer. We continued, and after only half a kilometer, we saw the pair of lions, a male and a female. The male had mane, one of the black ones that are unique to the Kalahari, and the girl looked just like all of them, female lions, that is.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Some of you know about this park and probably, when any of you went a while back, you knew it as the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park. Now, however, it is called the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park, being from the fact that it is in two countries, but has gates to three; Botswana, Namibia, and the Republic of South Africa.

Today we went to that park and are staying here for 4 nights; one night at Mata Mata, two nights at the Kalahari Tented Camp, and one night at Twee Riverien (two rivers).

When we legally left the Republic of Namibia, we arrived at the Mata Mata camp and turned right, going along the river road to see as many animals as possible. We saw the ever-present springbok, the gemsbok, the wildebeest, the jackal, and the vulture. What surprised us all was the quantity of vultures that was in the park, there was almost one in every tree, so many that we didn’t take too many pictures, knowing that they all would be there tomorrow in their camel-thorn trees.

That’s all for now, Folks!

After 25 days in Namibia, I have come up with several notes on the notably notable Namibia. Then again, having been here only 25 days, I doubt that anything that I have to say is noteworthy, but still, I will tell you what I have come across:

In Namibia, you are a park worker, a tourist, or a miner. As far as I have seen, there are lots of mines that need workers. There is also so much land mass dedicated to National Parks that there are lots of jobs available because of that. And last, in part because of that land mass, there are lots of tourists flocking to Namibia to see either dinosaur tracks, the ocean in Swakopmond, or jostling one another to get into parks such as Sossusvlei and Etosha. Indeed, as far as I can tell, there are only three other kinds of jobs that I can think of, and two of them cater to tourists. They are 1) Owning places to stay for tourists 2) Being a waiter at a restaurant, 3)Owning a farm out in the middle of nowhere and farming cattle, sheep, or goats.

That is my main note on Namibia, live long and remember, all who have ears to hear.

We are at a new place tonight and it is in the Kalahari Desert. It is a farm that farms sheep, cows, and goats. Some of the female goats are pregnant, and others have newly born kids. Of the sheep, as far as I could tell, there were no lambs, but since we were so far off, it really is hard to tell. Of the cows, we saw few, but we still saw lots of cow pies on the path.

Anyway, we went on a walk just to walk, and when we got to the first hill, I ran up it.  We continued on like that for some time, before turning around and heading back to our temporary home that has a zebra skin on the floor.

Once upon a time, there was a man named Joe. He was a very holy person, but didn’t get baptized until he was 21. Now it came to pass that he drank some, even though he went to church every Sunday. When he went to church and got baptized, the priest said to him, “You are now Bon. You will not drink, you will not smoke, and you will to do drugs.”

When Joe got home, he opened up his fridge, and took a bottle of wine from the shelf. He filled up a bucket with water and put the wine in it. When he finished, he then said to the wine, “You are now orange juice!”

How can you tell the difference between a mountain zebra (Hartmann’s) and the plains zebra (Burschells)?

The plains zebra is white with black stripes, while the mountain zebra is white with black stripes.

How do you make a cat bark?

You pour petrol over it, blowtorch that, and it goes WOOF!

How do you make a dog meow?

You slice it in half with a chainsaw and it goes reeeooow!

Vlei is pronounced flay and today we went to a vlei, two vleis to be exact. Their names were Sossusvlei and Deadvlei. Since the park is a long ways away from where we are staying now, we left early in the morning to get to the park when the gates open so that we could do the dunes while it was still cool outside. When we got into the park, bought our permits and drove to the parking lot at the end of the tar road, we started walking the five kilometers to the vleis.

At first we walked along the road, moving to the side when the shuttles went by. One might ask why we didn’t us the shuttle, and the answer is because my father wanted to walk, which was fine by me. About a kilometer in, we started walking away from the main road and towards some dunes that looked big. We walked towards those and then climbed them, only to see that there were still a lot more dunes to go across. This went on for some time before we finally got to the vlei, which means marsh in Afrikaans. The first one, Sossusvlei, was, of course, dry, and we walked across it to the parking lot. From the parking lot, we went to the road and over to Deadvlei. The walk was two kilometers, but we made it. On the other side of the vlei, there were little black spots moving up a big dune. When Eryn identified those as people, we realized just how big those dunes were.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Wikipedia says that: The meerkat or suricate, Suricata suricatta, is a small mammal belonging to the mongoose family. Meerkats live in all parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, in much of the Namib Desert in Namibia and southwestern Angola, and in South Africa. A group of meerkats is called a “mob”, “gang” or “clan”. Meerkats are primarily insectivores, but also eat lizards, snakes, scorpions, spiders, plants, eggs, small mammals, millipedes, centipedes and, more rarely, small birds. Meerkats are immune to certain types of venom, including the very strong venom of the scorpions of the Kalahari Desert, unlike humans. Meerkats are small burrowing animals, living in large underground networks with multiple entrances which they leave only during the day. They are very social, living in colonies averaging 20–30 members. Animals in the same group regularly groom each other to strengthen social bonds.

In case you haven’t guessed, there are meerkats where we are staying right now. Well, actually, there were meerkats, now there is just one meerkat living in the maze of twisty little passages, or twisty little maze of passages, or little maze of twisty passages, or- you get the point. It lives in a maze of tunnels in the shade of a small acacia tree in the middle of the driveway. As I was saying earlier, there used to be more, as in one more, but it died at nine years of age, leaving the one year old to fend for itself in the world of humans.

Tonight when we were having dinner, our host told us to be careful about snakes and scorpions around our house, which is half a kilometer away from the main building. The reason being that since there aren’t meerkats to eat all the bad things, the bad things like it there. As an afterthought, meerkats even eat mambas!

That’s all for now, Folks!

Today we saw a lot of snakes; from boomslang (tree snake, literally) to black mambas to zebra snakes. All of those are deadly poisonous, but luckily, none of us got bitten because there was a wall of glass seperating us from the snakes. How, one might ask, and the answer is ‘We were at a snake farm.’

As you heard from the first paragraph, we went to a snake farm. That snake farm had more than snakes, though, it had lizards and scorpions too. However, snakes were what they had most of.

After paying the admission fees, we went in side and turned left, going into the left wing of the complex. In there were snakes that I had never heard of before, so I skimmed through that before going to the middle part, where there were boomslang and zebra snakes. I looked at those for a while, quietly laughing when the boomslang tried to go through the glass, before moving on to the right wing. In the right wing, there were two black mambas, several scorpians, and several pythons. Both of the black mambas had shed recently, so there were skins on their floors. When we finished that, we left, sadly not paying the money to hold Dodo the python

Today, after lots of work on my part, Erym, Father, and I went quad biking on the dunes to the south of Swakopmond. The retailer that we used was Outback Explorers, and we went for an hour and a half. The first thing that we did was get our helmets. Since they obviously didn’t want us to get our hair on the inside of the helmets, they made us put little orange hair nets around our heads to protect the coating on the inside of the helmets. My father was the first one to get his helmet, and it was blue. I was next and got a dark gray one with a retractable visor since I didn’t have sunglasses with me. Eryn got the same style of helment as mine, but hers was bright orange. Once helmeted, we walked over to the large assortment of quad bikes. There were blue, red, and dark green. The dark green and blue ones were Yamaha Grizzly quads, and they had automatic shifting. The red ones had manual shifting and none of us wanted to go on those. Since this was our first time on quads, we got the three blue quads in the front of the garage while our guide went in a red quad.

We left in a large cloud of red dust, our wheels spinning to find purchase on the slippery sand. We followed our leader and drove up the dunes towards the biggest ones that we could see. Them being the closest, they also blocked out everything behind them, so saying that we went towards the biggest dunes that we could see isn’t that hard. We went for forty-five minutes before stopping and the guide took Eryn and I both on joy-rides while he made Father follow behind him. Lucky.

We rode back in silence, save for the roar of the engines and the sound of squeeky brakes. We went across the river again and when we got back, we were all glad that we had quad biked.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Wikipedia says that: Dune 7, which is the highest dune in the world, not Big Daddy, as it’s the seventh dune past the Tsauchab river before dune 45 on your right handside toward Sossusvlei (note that this should not be confused with another “Dune 7” found in Namibia, near Walvis Bay

We didn’t go to the big dune 7, but we did go to the other Dune 7 just east of Walvis Bay, which is south of Swakopmond. We drove the 45 minutes to get there, and when we got within sight and saw tiny dots moving slowly up the side, the people with the sharper eyes identified those as humans, and then we started thinking of the long climb ahead of us.

Gravity was against us, when we were going up, what with slippery sand and all, for every two feet that we went up, we went down one. That was very tiring. Unless it has been really windy or a lot of people have gone up the part that my father and mother went up, you can see their zigzags as they went up the mountain. As I was the first one going up the slope and was about a third of the way up the slow climb when the others started. Since it is a lot faster going along the top, I went up to the tallest point, which is pretty high, stood there, and walked almost all the way back to where I started when I met Eryn coming up. My father came up too, and we started what you might call rough-housing, as in I would try to push him off to one side, but he always succeeded in pushing me over.

When we went back down, I decided to do something really fun to get down: rolling. If any of you ever feel the urge to roll down the side of a tall sand dune, resist the urge. It is most uncomfortable and you get sand in places that shouldn’t get sand in them. Needless to say, I got down eventually, walked back to the car, and we were off.

You probably do, but since my mother says that that is inappropriate, so I won’t talk about your flatulence. However, I will talk about gas, or fuel, to be biologically correct.

We left our flat to go towards Henties Bay, which is north of Swakopmond. On our way, we stopped at a Shell station to fuel up and top off the tank. When we got there, Lots of servers wanted us to go to their pumps, and my father chose the one that he thought would be the fastest. When we pulled up behind an old gray car, their hood was put up and the attendants started dinking around with the engine. While they were doing that, other people appeared and surrounded our car and started washing the windows and pouring water over the car itself. We sat through that, and when we finally pulled up, our car was almost spotless. While the tank was filling, they attendants asked if they should do stuff with the engine, and this time, we declined. When my father got out to pay, the gathered attendants tried to guess where we were from, and when he said yes to America, they started singing the national anthem.

That’s all for now, Folks!

A lighthouse is supposed to provide light for the passing ships to show that there is land there. Today we went to a lot of places and there are many stories that I could tell. What follows is but one of the great multitude that should be voiced:

Ethan woke up, freezing cold. Why had he been so careless the night before and not put the covers on straightly and correctly. He turned, and saw Eryn sleeping there so peacefully in the other bed, so opposite of how she was when she was awake, before going back to sleep.

When Ethan woke up for good, it was several hours later and he was well rested, seemingly ready for whatever the day might throw out at him. After taking a shower and, of course, styling his newly cut hair, he left the bathroom and hurried towards the dining room from which delicious smells were coming. He ate breakfast hurriedly, pausing only to laugh at some weird jokes that his father told him, before going back to his book that he was reading.

He read and read, and when he looked up, he saw (and heard) that his parents weren’t home, and gleaned from Eryn that they were at the Laundromat, doing laundry. Since it was freezing cold again and since his jeans were being washed, Ethan curled up on the couch and did his homework like a good little child, waiting for his parents to get home.

When they did get home, they doled out all the clothes to their rightful owners before the whole family left to see flamingoes at the head of the Swakop River. They stood there and watched flamingoes for a time, before going to the Fruits and Vegies Market on the main road to restock on food. There, they got candy and soda, fresh loaves and apples, and anything else that they needed. They finished that and got home only to unpack the groceries and leave again for dinner, going to a lighthouse that was somewhat Italian with a lot of seafood. When they were done, they left and went back home.

That’s all for now, Folks!

There are lots of different kinds of crystals, and today, we saw a lot of them; the reason being that we went to the Krystal Gallery in Swakopmond. The Krystal Gallery is a large building that houses lots and lots of crystals, ranging in size from the size of a fingernail to ten times my size. Today we saw mainly the larger ones.

We got buzzed in to the gallery and paid the N$64.00 to get in before heading off into the ‘cave’ that was supposedly an exact replica of the one in which the largest crystal formation was found. It was a long passage. A twisty little maze of passages, or a maze of twisty little passages, or a little twisty maze-
you get the point. When we got out, the first thing that we saw was a giant crystal formation about ten times my size and it was green. It was sitting there and we took several pictures of it before looking around the cavernous hall some more. In the center, there was another large crystal formation sitting on a pedestal in the middle of a small fountain, and right beside it, there was a carving made out of emerald and something else that was black, making it very pretty. There were more crystals throughout, and upstairs were displays of the nicer looking specimens, like pyrite, black tourmaline, and watermelon tourmaline. When we finished up there, we went back downstairs and Eryn and I got some small tumbled rocks before we all left and went back to the car to drive away.

That’s all for now, Folks

A song and a sickness. Today I only worried about the fever. There are two cats where we are staying, and the male one, the one with the fluffy tail, likes to scratch me. Luckily, the fever is not very harmful, so I don’t have to worry. Anyway the point of this paragraph is that there are two cats here.

The two cats are black cats, and one of them is like my cousin’s cat named Jade; the reason being that they both are black and follow people around everywhere and love to be rubbed. Today I saw and rubbed both of the cats a lot, though the male one scratched me and drew blood twice. My favorite is the female, for when we go inside, she waits patiently by the door until one of us goes back out again, or until it is dark.

There are also two ducks here; one female and one male. The female one is brown (ugly) and has a cut-off wing so she seems lopsided in everything she does, including chasing the male. The male one is prettier, and seems to tolerate having the female chase him, though at times, he has to run away and jump into the pool for an escape route when the female gets too vicious.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Mitjie is a young meerkat that is a pet at the AiAiba Lodge in Namibia. We first met him when we went into the lodge and saw him lying on his stomach on the gray concrete flooring of the lapa. Opposite of my mother’s directions, I sat down, and it came to me. Right as the employee said ‘Don’t worry, it doesn’t bite’ guess what, it came up and bit me on the leg. Not very hard of course, but still enough to be a surprise. As it turns out, its open mouth seems to go before everything that it does, and his little teeth bite into whatever moves. It never broke the skin, so it was pretty harmless. When my father sat down, it ran to him and sank its jaws into his skin, taking off maybe the first of seven layers of skin. We both played with him, before heading off on a walk to see the bushman drawings that the lodge is famous for. Right before we left, though, some warthogs went across the yard, and the meerkat, since it is a baby, started suckling on a warthog. When it bit the warthog on the nose, the all ran off, and we did too, but in a different direction, towards the hike.

When we came back, the meerkat was nowhere to be seen, but when we looked around after ice cream, there it was, digging holes in the ground. It came to us and we petted it, while it bit us. By the time we left, I wanted a meerkat for a pet.

Eryn figured out what makes an Australian accent an Australian accent; make all the vowels into a long ‘i’ sound, so the title of this post would be pronounced something like ‘trikes ine rikes’ or something like that. I don’t know why, but Eryn was saying stuff like g’day mate or other such phrases in her new and weird attempt at an Australian accent tonight at dinner.

Today we went to see the dinosaur tracks that the farm is famous for. There are two main places where tracks are visible. One of them just has several sets of small tracks, and the other has a lot of big tracks. When we went this morning, we first stopped at the little tracks, to see what they were about. They are about three inches long from the tip of the largest of the three toes to the heel, and their stride is about one foot. After looking at those tracks in the sandstone, we continued up the tilted rock and came upon the big tracks, which are maybe a foot from the tip of the largest of three toes to the heel with a stride of about one yard. There were also several other sets of prints, or ‘spoors’ as our host calls them, and we sat up there and looked, while also using the phone reception that was so scant and spotty in the valley. In the evening, we went up there again and our host told us more about the sandstone and the ceratosaurus tracks.

Snakes, snakes, snakes…there are lots of snakes. Though only about 25% of the snakes in southern Africa are poisonous to people, there are still a lot of those type. Most of the ones that aren’t poisonous to people are pythons or small snakes. Our hosts have encountered snakes on various occasions, and the following are just some of those adventures:

In the campsites, there are some showers with water, along with toilets. Sometimes, when people leave those places, they don’t close the doors all the way. There was a woman who either did that, or someone in her party did that who went in to take a shower. Now, in the shower there is a big stone block that you can put your feet upon to scrub your leg without having to double over. This woman was taking a shower, when suddenly, out from under the rock, came a millipede. Now, of course, this woman probably had been stressing about snakes, and the sight of something coming out from under the rock was too much for her. She screamed ‘SNAKE’. At the house, Reinhold, our host, heard that scream and grabbed his revolver to go and shoot the snake. But when he got there, all he saw was a millipede.

We had a good laugh about that one, my family and I, remembering the first time that we had gone to Costa Rica and the parents had stressed to us about how there were lots of poisonous snakes there and if we saw one, we should get them. What happened was this; on our first day, we stayed in a treehouse. Eryn and I were playing down on the forest floor, when, suddenly, Eryn saw a millipede at the bottom of a small trench. The same thing happened for my father as it did Reinhold, and we have remembered it ever since.

Before dinner, Reinhold showed us a picture of a python coiled up in the grass and said, “Mary, the python” we laughed at that, and then he went on to tell us that Mary was a python that was shedding, and since they shed over their eyes, too, Mary stayed by water all the while. He told us that she sat there by the dam for a week before she finished shedding and left, never to be seen again.

Once, in the house, Reinhold and Adele thought that they heard a snake under the couch. Adele got down on her stomach by the china cabinet and proceeded to shine a light under the couch. The snake, however, was actually under the china cabinet, and when she got down, it spit it’s venom into her face. She immediately washed her face, and then they started to chase it out of the house. They chased and chased, and when it got near a big battery, it accidently touched both terminals at once and caused an explosion, blowing itself to kingdom-come while it was at it.

The black mamba is one of the most poisonous snakes in all of Africa. Once upon a time, there was a black mamba. It wanted shelter, so it went into the dog box by the screen door to the house. The owners heard the noise, but when they looked, the dog was in the box too, so it might have hurt the dog. After getting the dog out slowly and carefully, they took a shot, and that mamba didn’t see another day.

Those are four of Reinhold’s snake stories, I would bet that if I asked him, I would learn more, but then I might bore you with all of the stories.

That’s all for now folks!

Some people say that dinosaurs did exist, some people don’t, but nonetheless, there is some evidence that they did indeed exist, along with the fossils that have been dug up and put into museums. The evidence are merely tracks, made a long time ago by something walking across Namibia, though I doubt that the area that we call Namibia was actually called Namibia. Anyway, that place is called Dinosaur Tracks Farm, and rightly so, for it is a farm that has tracks that are like no others that there are today.

We left Etosha National Park this morning and went south from Okaukuejo Rest Camp towards the Andersson Gate. We, after stopping twice, once at a watering hole and once to take pictures of two hyenas by the road, arrived at the gate and left the park, on the road south. As the drive was no great distance, we arrived at a reasonably good time; one o’clock. We met with our hosts, a tall, old man and his wife, before settling into our rooms, reading, and napping. Tonight we had a good dinner of macaroni with cheese and tomato sauce and a salad. When we got back to our two rooms on the block of four rooms, we got ready to go to bed. Tomorrow we will go and see the dinosaur tracks and probably take a lot of pictures.

Of course, there aren’t wolves here, but what I’m talking about here is a watering hole called Wolfsnes. But sadly, we didn’t see any mammals there; only birds. However, we did see a lot of mammals at another waterhole, called Okondeka.

When we first got there, the only animals that we could see were zebra, wildabeeste, springbok, and ostiches. Then, suddenly, out of the bush, a lion springs up, and all the animals run and flee as it stands, only to sit back down again and the plain falls back into its usual sounds and sights. But no, it is not to be, for right as everything gets settled down, another lion pops up, this tme, right in the middle of all of the animals, scaring them off in all directions. Then the lion lays back down and all returns to normal, this time to stay. The lions seem to be asleep, but no, when we pull up a little, there, right beside the first spotted lion, is a cub, just sitting there. When we look right, there are three more lions sitting under a tree and napping. Since those are far away and hard to take pictures of, we head back to the camp.

That is the end of that tale, hear and remember.

Did you know that rhinos can roar and growl? I didn’t, but tonight I got proved wrong at the Okaukuejo Watering Hole. Okaukuejo is a camp situated in about the middle of the park going east to west, but it is just south of the middle going north to south. We are staying here for two nights, just as we stayed at Halali two nights. It seems to be a bigger waterhole, but the pool is a bit smaller.

Anyway, back to the rhinos…we had seen none at all today when we arrived at the Okaukuejo Camp. We ‘nested’ and Eryn and I swam in the three small pools. When we were done and got back, Mother had a meal cooked and ready for us. We ate that and then hurried to the watering hole for sunset, but NEVER forgetting Magnum Bars in our haste. When we got to the water, we saw several giraffes, a gemsbok, some springbok, and some jackals. We then sat down to watch and wait to see what would happen when it got dark. An hour later, three rhinos were around the watering hole, two of them were fighting, and the other was taking a drink. The fighting ones were growling and roaring at each other, and then, when the little one charged, the big one fled, but came back and beat the little one and got the rights of the watering hole.

Guess what!! we saw a LEOPARD!!! It was sitting on the ground near a watering hole trying to figure out what to do with its kill, a kudu, which was five times its size and bulky, too. We watched it for nigh on two hours, and what it succeeded in doing at long last was dragging the kudu behing the tree, eating the entrails, and leaving. Though that was the only new thing that we saw today, we did see other animals, such as gemsbok, springbok, impala, zebras, kudu, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos.Most of them were just sitting under trees, but some of them, like the elephants, were playing in the water, which was mostly mud.

When we got back from our drive, Eryn and I swam, ate burgers, and then went to the watering hole to sit through three hours of sitting and seeing only a couple rhinos and jackals. While we were sitting out there, we heard thunder, saw lightning, and felt a little rain, but other than that, it was a regular night by the watering hole.

As I have said before, Etosha was the biggest game park in the world before it shrank. Still, though, even now there is a fair amount of land; 22,912 square kilometers. Thus far, we haven’t seen much of it.

We started out the day at Onguma Bush Camp and left pretty early, set on getting in the gates soon. We got in the gates fairly quickly and the first animals that we saw were Damara Dik-Diks. We saw a bunch of those before moving up on the size a couple of times. We saw a giraffe! Not that they’re that rare, but seeing on is still kind of nice. We then went in to a rest camp to try to pay for the park and when we came back, there were banded mongooses in the grill of our car. They got scared by us and ran off, but not before we could get some pictures.The next place that we went to that was exciting was a watering hole that had zebras, kudu, gemsbok, impala, springbok, warthogs, wildabeest, giraffes, and even lions! We took pictures and waited to see if the lions would do anything, but they just sat in the shade of an acacia tree. For the rest of the day, we drove around, trying to find something to take pictures of. For the rest of the time, the only new animals that we saw were red hartebeeste. When we got to Halali Rest Camp, we ‘nested’ and swam in the big pool before eating dinner and going to the water hole, and only seeing jackels, rhinos, and impala. What made it even more annoying was the fact that the spot lights kept getting turned on and off, so some of the pictures turned out badly.

So, we’re almost to Etosha National Park. It was the biggest game park in the world at 100,000 sq kilometers, but now it isn’t, because it shrank down to only 22,912 sq kilometers. Anyway…we are at Onguma Bush Camp and Eryn and I just swam in their pool, which actually wasn’t that cold. Onguma is situated just outside of Etosha and tonight we’re going to go on a game drive on this side of the big fence.
Later that day:
We went on our game drive, and we were the only ones on it. We got in a big truck that seats eleven passengers and went out the protection gate that keeps the animals out of the campsites and started driving. The first animals that we saw were some zebras that were standing in the middle of the road. Our guide didn’t stop for those, but instead opted for stopping to look at bushbabies. We saw those and moved on, seeing only a bat eared fox and some springbok in the remaining time. It got pretty cold, and Eryn and I pulled on the blankets that were provided. When we got back, we were really tired and went straight to bed.