Blogs from Etosha National Park, Namibia, Africa - page 9

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 ... read more

It is Monday noon here in Outjo, just south of Etosha Park. Nice internet cafe. Saturday night after my last entry, I could not find my way back to the guest house, had to stop and ask for directections, that was tough to do! Sleep is sporadic, 3 hours, awake for 3, sleep for 4, had a nap on sunday afternoon. Spent Sunday walking around Windhoek, nice malls here. Bought supplies at a large grocery store. Met craig for dinner at "Nice", a gourmet restaurant that the school planned to eat at. I was a guest along with the 20 students, very nice dinner. spent the evening in the guest house lounge talking to a professor from London and a young couple from Ireland that have been traveling for 11 months!! They have been to south ... read more

October 2004 After leaving “Germany”, the next stop on the Namibia circle was Cape Cross about 80 miles north of Swakopmund. In 1486, Diogo Cáo, an early Portuguese explorer, erected a cross on a small rocky outcrop along the desolate and forbidding wastes of the Namibian skeleton Coast. It was battered by sudden squalls and fierce windstorms, blasted by shifting desert sands, baked by a relentless sun and shrouded with dense fogs for about 4 centuries before the coming of the new colonists. Meanwhile somebody else had claimed the area for themselves - the cross now a replica is situated next to the biggest breeding Cape Fur Seal colony in the world. The numbers at the colony vary according to the time of year, but can apparently reach over 250,000 during the breeding season. If the ... read more

After successfully finishing our semester at Stellenbosch, Heidi, David, Ximena, and I were off to Namibia! We took the Intercape bus from Cape Town to Windhoek, the capital of Nambia. In total the bus trip took about an entire day, we only stopped for food and gas. Once we arrived in Windhoek, Ximena and David took another bus to Swakupmond, a popular coast-side town. Heidi and I however, chose to stay in Windhoek and spent a night in the Cardboard Box hostel. We had already booked a night in the hostel so after getting off of the bus, it was just a matter of getting there. We got in a cab, the first time I had ever been in a taxi, and told him where we needed to go. I was very excited when we actually ... read more

Etosha National Park! WOW!!!! Talk about wild animals!!! We were in Etosha yesterday and the day before and we saw so many aminals!!! I was going to down load all of the pictures that we took, but as I am a little travel weary, I forgot my camera back in the hotel- I will have to post those at the next available internet cafe- SORRY. Okay, so as we entered Etosha the very first animals we saw were Warthogs- Go Pumba!!! Then it was Ostricha and Springbok! WOW! There is an over population of Springbok! I think the Lions need to eat more often, I dont think they could power through a good percent of the population of Springbok if they wanted to. As we drove on to the campsite in the park we saw an ... read more