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Published: November 25th 2008
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The first night at Etosha we stayed at Namutoni Wilderness Resort. In the campground, not at the actual resort. It was really nice! The showers were amazing and the pool was nice too! And it even had a washroom with big sinks for washing clothes and clotheslines! Luxury! We went for an early morning game drive and then another one in the late afternoon after relaxing by the pool. The morning one was amazing and we saw all the animals that I already mentioned. In the evening we didn't really see anything until the end. Then we saw a family of lions, 2 adult females and several cubs. One was standing on the sign post in the middle of the road so they were pretty close! We did our game drives in the big truck that we go everywhere in so I didn't think we would see much; I thought all the animals would get scared away. But it worked well enough apparently because we even saw a leopard! I'm still really excited about that! The evening safari we drove a long ways so we had to rush to get back to our campsite by 7 when the gates closed. We
were going 80 km/hr on dirt roads for a lot of the time and there were a ton of bumps. Multiple times we were completely air-born and the floor boards even came up! (We have food storage space under the floor). It was a speed safari! Exciting though. Towards the end it started pouring! Literally pouring. Buckets. The whole sky was coming down. The desert/grasslands turned into swamps. When we left the campsite it had been sunny so we had a bunch of washing out on the lines to dry and some of our tents were open to air out. Luckily the people who stayed behind closed our tents eventually, but not quick enough to keep them completely dry. All our washing was soaking and didn't dry overnight where we hung it in the washroom. I was on cook group so I didn't have time to deal with my tent right away. When I finally went in there were puddles all over the floor! I had to use my towel to wipe them up. Luckily my towel is one of the ones that you can squeeze out and then still use (like a sponge almost) because there was a lot
of water! Oh well, part of travelling in Africa during the rainy season. The weather changes really fast! One minute it can be really sunny and then 10 minutes later pouring rain! Crazy!
The next morning we went on another game drive on our way to the next campsite. We drove straight through the National Park. It's supposedly one of the largest, most famous game reserves in Africa! Lots of zebra, wildebeest, oryx, impala, gazelle, gemsbuk, etc. At one water hole there were a whole bunch of giraffes. It's really cool to see them drink! And run! They're so crazy! One of my favorites because there aren't any other animals that are even similar to them! Our second campsite was Okakuejo. It was similar to the first one. In the evening we all went to the waterhole to try to see some rhinos. We had perfect timing! Within 10 minutes of us arriving a rhino wandered towards the waterhole. It drank and stood in the water for a while and was really close to us! A while later a mother and baby came to drink as well. It was really neat! And of course a bunch of jackals which
didn't restrict themselves to the waterhole and instead wandered randomly through the camp. It was hard to tell if the rhinos were black rhinos or white, but we think they were black.
Early the next morning Will, Chandy, and I got up to go to the waterhole before breakfast. We were sitting there watching and all of a sudden we saw some lions come out of the bushes on the far side. First one, then 3, then 8, then 10! Needless to say we were really excited! It was pretty dark so we went over to the other side to see them closer. We got nearer and guess what?!?!? Our lions were zebras! Very disappointing! It was still cool to see them though. There was a whole herd of them, probably around 50 and they just silently moved out of the bushes and very cautiously moved down towards the water hole posting sentries along the way to watch out for predators. Then we climbed the tower for the sunrise which was alright, but not spectacular.
After breakfast (November 22) we left for Cheetah Park...
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