Namibia Day 11

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Wow what a day! Our first day on safari was even better than we hoped. An early start this morning to make the most of the day as we were out of the camp by 8am this morning and before many minutes we were seeing all kinds of wildlife. Meg has bought a bird book and has turned into a ‘twitcher’ extraordinaire overnight as each bird we see has to be marked off in the book: I am waiting for her to buy an anorak!

I won’t attempt to name all of the birds we have seen, but there has been a lot including numerous birds of prey. Perhaps the most remarkable was the secretary birds which were almost as large as the nearby springbok. Before we left this morning there was a hornbill that took a liking to our car windscreen... we’re not sure why.

We have been lucky enough to see to prides of lions, the first with one male and several females and cubs looked as if they were about to start a hunt on a herd of distant wildebeest but the distances here are too large between the roads here for us to be able to see if they were successful. The second pride of a single female and male we saw towards the end of the day at one of the water holes slowly making their way across in front of us seeming oblivious to the excitement they were causing amongst the other animals and human watchers alike.

We have also seen several single and groups of elephants some with young at water holes and feeding. Meg spotted a rhino, probably the very elusive black rhino and when we told some of the other people nearby they got very excited as these are incredibly hard to see as they inhabit thick bush most of the time. We of course saw numerous springbok. We think that they must outnumber people here as we normally see more of them than people every day.

Another thing that we saw today was a mini tornado that swept across the car park we had stoped in, Meg jut had the camera ready t so we were able to get a quick shot.

Tomorrow is another day on safari, perhaps on the other side of the park. That’s if the snake that’s camped out in the ceiling of our porch doesn’t get us first.

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