Safari thru Etosha and chilling with the cheetahs!

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Day 308
DRIVE DAY- We headed off early stopping to cook group shop and it was Carly cook group's turn again! With some Eland, Cabbage salad and Greek salad on the menu.. what could go wrong?
First we miscalculated and went over budget and we had no idea how tough Eland was when cooked on the fire.
With another stop couple hours later for lunch we arrived at the Treesleepers reserve for a local tour.
The treesleepers are a local tribe aptly named as the sleep in trees! Our enthusiastic guide gave us a traditional fire lighting demonstration, how to catch/hunt termites, and the local traditional hunting techniques and poisonous plants used.
After a drink and some biltong (dried and spiced meat in this case beef I hope.. a popular African local snack) overlooking the river we jumped back on the trunk in search of a suitable bush camp before it got too dark. This proved harder than anticipated, first we got bogged, we continued on past other small clearings will bogging potential and finally settled in what looked like a reasonable spot once we cleared some Acacia trees only to be informed by a local passing that it was prime Black Mumba (yes that's a bloody big and lethal snake) territory. He advised us to burn some rubber.. and that we did!
Meanwhile, Carly and her cook group of Kellie and Ebany set to preparing dinner amongst a plaque of bugs ... thousands of them insistent on becoming part of dinner! The salads went down well (musta been too dark to see the bugs!!) the Eland was tasty but incredibly chewy and then the heavens opened and it began bucketing rain. An admirable group effort and everything was packed away, Mel and Franko invited us into the Truck (there bedroom when on the road) for a truck party with a bottle of red.

Day 309
Early start as we headed into Etosha National Park, Etosha meaning "Great White Place", is dominated by a massive mineral pan. The pan is part of the Kalahari Basin, the floor of which was formed around 1000 million years ago. The Etosha Pan covers around 25% of the National Park it was originally a lake fed by the Kunene River. However the course of the river changed thousands of years ago and the lake dried up. But being wet season the the lake hold water temporarily at this time of year attracting thousands of birds but making wildlife spotting more difficult so our expectations weren't high. Needless to say we were ecstatic when within minutes of passing through the gate we met large posse of Giraffes followed by three male Lions chilling out roadside. Then we ticked off the just about the entire Antelope family passing herds of Impalla, Gazelles, Wilderbeast, Harterbeast and Zebra. We stopped for a late breaky before returning to the game drive, but with the heat of the day increasing, the wildlife spotting decreasing quickly. We made our way to the middle camp site known as Halili for lunch quickly followed by the enormous pool for an all in game of water volleyball. Exhausted we headed out for Game Drive number two for the day at dusk fitted with beer and chips. Shortly into the rive we spotted a very rare Black Rhino and true to its shy nature it quickly scurried out of sight. We were amused by a group of fighting young gazelles and watched in anticipation of a Hyena eying off a lone gazelle, it too true to form and sat back lazily to wait for someone else to make the kill and him to scavenge the leftovers.
Back at camp we were treated to another local meat Kudu (it too proved difficult to cook on the open fire) and rice salad. After dinner we headed to the famous waterhole, after a slight detour...ok we got lost we finally stumbled upon the silent floodlit waterhole to sit and wait. However, as it was wet season and there was an abundance of water throughout the national park the waterhole remained unvisited for over an hour. Tired we headed back to the camp site only for the wild life to come to us. A posse of three fierce Honeybadgers ransacked the camp in search of food, knocked over metal bins in search of our Kudu scraps, hissing and growling leaving our group huddled up on the tables trying to sneak a photo. The Honeybadger despite its sweet sounding name is one of the most vicious African animals due to their tendency to mutilate genitalia and one of the four animals actually feared by lions..understandably. (What are the other three... giraffes, hippo and elephant) According to the locals the only way to get a Honeybadger to release its vice like jaw's is to break a stick nearby fooling the Honeybadger into believing it has broken your bone.
Leaving the Honeybadgers to it, we snuck off to bed careful to zip the tent of securely behind us.


Day 310 - Valentines Day
After a night of solid rain we woke to giant puddles and lots of wet clothes in our tent. After a quick cold shower Carly returned to the tent to find chocolate and red wine (Jez really does know the way to Carly's heart). Back on the road again we stumbled across a female Lion enjoying its morning kill making Etosha one of favourite national parks.
We stopped at Oujo for lunch and a cook group shop and Carly checked into the world of cyberspace. We welcomed Owen back on board who had gone walk-a-bout for a couple days and made our way to Cheetah Park. Cheetah Park is home to three house cheetahs which roam carefree around there houseyard with two dogs, a young giraffe and a huge cheetah reserve for cheetahs injured and saved from poachers and farmers. After a pat and pic, it was dinner time and donkey was on the menu we watched each of the cheetahs devour a ¼ donkey and then the dogs help themselves to the skin once they were certain that the cheetah had finished.
We made our way to the camp site kindly escorted by the baby giraffe desperate to keep up with Barbara (one of the funniest things ever at giraffe at full speed!)
At camp we desperately searched for some dry ground to pitch the tent a tough ask when its pissing down rain, Jez and Mike found a spot sheltered by some shadecloth and stood guard whilst Carly and Gizelle returned to the truck to grab the tents. Happy with our find we set off on the reserve feeding drive where we we treated to some spectacular cheetah jumps, fights, a one eyed cheetah and a young cub try and push his share under the fence to his mother and sibling (ooohh).
Back at camp we enjoyed a red with Mel and Franco in celebration of Mel's birthday and awaited an epic cook group effort deliver delicious tandoori chicken and couscous.


Day 311
A night of unrelenting rain and music from the bar, it wasn't a night for sleeping. We grabbed some breaky whilst the 'all-nighters' finished off there beers! Another DRIVE DAY! Carly headed up front to take in the spectacular lush scenery with Mel and Franco, stopping at a local craft stall for some souvenirs. We stopped in the middle of the Namibian desert for lunch and enjoyed a nap before arriving at Spitzkoppe. Entering the park we were bogged briefly but were kindly assisted by some locals before arriving at the foot of the 1728m rock formation that mysterically appears amidst an otherwise flat, dry and barren desert. Also known as the 'matterhorn of Africa'. We set up tent on the rock delivering an amazing view. Jez returned to prepare dinner and Carly set of with Mike, Gizelle and Matt up Spitzkoppe.
After a couple hour scramble descending and trying an alternative routes we made it to a great spot with 360degrees of views. We returned just in time for Jez's now famous burgers and wedges and sat around the camp fire entertained by Jono's brush with death on his climb near stepping on a huge cobra who quickly sat up in protest forcing Jono to retreat quickly but with enough time to take a couple snaps! We decided to call it a night regretting our laziness not getting our torch from the tent before dark given we strategically placed our tent on top of the rocks, we finally stumbled across our tent only to find it on its head(opps.. musta caught a bit of wind on the higher ground) and it contents strewn within. We quickly adjusted our tent and sleeping gear before settling in for the night.

Day312
After another rainy night we decided against a sunrise walk due to the overcast sky and set off just after 7 with Gizelle, Tom, Al and Cathy back up Spitzkoppe (this time with a full set of batteries and on cobra alert). We attempted to take the same route we had the afternoon before, proving difficult but with confidence and skills of a days scramble behind us we made it even further then the night before in record time.After taking in the amazing views we returned to camp for breaky and packed up the tent set for Swakopmund. DRIVE DAY. With endless beautiful scenery we finally arrived at Far Out Adventures only to discover we had been traveling an hour behind our entire time in Namibia since changing our clocks back after crossing the border (opps!). We viewed the promo DVD depicting the activities available for our next few days and signed our lives away.
We checked into our private room at Bundu Motel and enjoyed the luxary of a hot shower for the first time in days and gave in to the convenience of KFC for a very late lunch. That evening we met the Oasis crew at Far Out Bar for a predinner drink before dinner at Napolitana. Where we feasted like kings on a grill of Kudu, Springbok, Ostrich and Oryx and some baby ribs (the size of a large pig!). After we stuffed ourselves silly we took a walk down to the beach with Mike and Gizelle before returning to Far Out bar for multiple shots into the early hours of the morning.

Heaps of photo's so check page two!

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Photos

Matt and keiran
Aboard Barbara

patting a purring cheetah
shortly before carly realises she has an allergy to cheetah's