Great White Place of Dry water

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To make up for the extra day at the cheetah park we had an early start (6am) to make our was to Etosha National Park, a 20,000 sq km protected park and wildlife haven, dominated by a great white pan! We would be spending the next 3 days here, our first proper game drive! I won't go into the ins and outs of all the drives we did but we did 3 morning drives (6am-9am) and 2 afternoon drives (3pm-6pm) and saw lots of animals especially giraffe and zebras. Unfortunately, we didn't see all the big five but see springbock, jamesbock, jackals, elephants, eagals, ostrich, mongoose, warthogs and kudu. In the evenings, at the campsites we were staying at, they had floodlit waterholes nearby, so every evening after dinner we would wander down and sit and watch. On the first night, i saw zebras come to the water but then it got late and I went to bed. I found out in the morning that 2 rhinos and 4 lions came to drink from the waterhole! Damn! So the second night, at a different campsite and waterhole, I stayed up until 11.30pm and saw two pairs of rhino, a huge elephant and a hyiena - well worth it and they were only a few metres away! After a 3days of fun-filled wildlife spotting we exited Etosha NP and made our way to Grootfontein, a small ammenities town. We spent a few hours in Grootfontein doing bank stuff and shopping and then headed a few kms out of the town to see the world largest meteorite. Considering it is a national monument, there isn't much infomation on it only that it weighs 80 tons and landed on earth about 80,000 years ago. There is no obvious impact crater as lots of sediments have been washed into the area over this time. That night we stayed at the campsite next door and had woodfire heated showers (at least they were hot!).

On 3rd May, we had a driving day through northern Namibia along the Caprivi Strip. It was a beautiful drive through the countryside and it was the first time since being in Africa that we saw the little communities and their mud rondavel huts along the main roads. I spent the whole day kneeled on the beach of the truck looking at the scenery and waving to the locals! At sunset we pulled over to bush camp, 60km from the Namibian/Botswana. After we had set up our tents, a tourism officer pulled up in his car and told us it was illegal to camp here and that it was very dangerous! I'm sure what the danger was but the police were going to patrol the area through the night - you'll be pleased to know that we survived the night and headed to the Botswana border at Popa Falls the next morning.

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