Day 199 - A wildlife programme up close and personal

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Our drive took us into Etosha National Park, the reason for most foreigners' vists. This is a huge park with plenty of wildlife, and even on the drive to the campsite inside the park we saw plenty of animals... zebra, wilderbeasts, giraffes. The sun was really beating down on us today so the first thing we did was find the swimming pool to cool down. It's amazing that pretty much every campsite we've stayed in has had a pool, and they've by no means been luxury places. It just seems to illustrate how much of a vital amenity a pool is in these 40+C temperatures. Our truck took most of the group out for a game drive in the early evening but we stayed put on the grass by the pool. We were pleased too as we had seen a black rhino come and drink from the watering hole, whereas the game drive had not really shown anything new regards to wildlife. After dinner it got dark very quickly - it's true that night falls like a blanket in the tropics, unlike those gloriously long summer evenings in England. The main event today was a few hours sat around the campsite's watering hole. This is a small floodlit lake just beyond the fence. Animals don't like to move too much during the heat of the day, so they visit the watering hole once the sun has gone down. (It's funny the parallel between the animals and their watering hole and us and the swimming pools and bars.) We weren't disappointed, firstly by the herd of about 16 elephants, then 6 black rhino, and the best bit was watching a herd of 28 elephants, including babies, walk the 10 mins from the edge of the trees in single file to get a drink. Truly an amazing sight. There was also a cheeky springbok winding up the elephants time and again, who they tried to scare off by flicking their trunks at him and trumpeting. Although it's easy to lose patience after 20 minutes spent watching an empty watering hole, a major part of why it's such a spectacle is that it's so unpredictable and your evening is purely at the mercy of the animals' whims.

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