The Great White North

Last Friday we started our week-long group safari through northern Namibia. We are part of a group of seven, plus a guide and his assistant. Our group consists of two other Americans (although they're not together), a Dutch daughter and father, and a girl from Portugal; our guide Daheya (D) and his assistant Matthew are both native Namibians. Everything about the trip has been really great...we have nice meals made for us, our tents are like mini-mansions, and we have seen tons of animals.
Our first day we drove to Okonjima to visit the organization AfriCat. They promote conservations of large cats, and educate farmers and children about them. Farmers typically want to shoot cheetahs and leopards if they're on their property, but in reality, if they do, more predators that eat livestock move in. As an alternative AfriCat will take the large cats and release them somewhere else, or raise cubs if the moms are shot. They currently have over 80 cats on their property, and we were lucky enough to be able to visit a few. We went on a game drive there, first stopping to watch a leopard feeding on some big chunks of donkey. This leopard was raised by humans since he was about 5 days old and was a pet for about 10 years until he showed signs of aggression.


In another enclosure we went looking for cheetahs. These cheetahs, which were unable to be released back into the wild, are 14 years old now, and the typical cheetah only lives about 8 years. These guys hardly seemed ferocious, but we're told this isn't normal...


We then headed up further north to the enormous Etosha National Park. Etosha means 'Great White Place' and most of the park's 20,000 square kilometers (Delaware is about 6,500 square km) is taken up by the Etosha Pan, a vast dry lake bed, but the wildlife is found in the grasslands and forests around it. Shortly after entering the park, we saw several giraffes. We all thought it was sooo cool, and we stopped to watch each one. We reached camp and had some time to relax before our game drive. In the late afternoon, we headed out to see some animals. Top on eveyone's list was lions. We drove to one waterhole where we saw some giraffes and various antelopes.

We moved on and saw a few herds of wildebeest.


Shortly after that, we saw the outline of an elephant kind of hiding behind a tree. Again, we stopped for about 20 minutes to try to get a better look. The drive was getting on and we were feeling like we hadn't seen that much - we were already tiring of giraffes, and had seen no predators or good views of elephants. D was driving down a road with thick scrub forest on either side, hardly ideal for seeing animals. Then we slowed - what had he seen? Just a road to the right. We turn right, and continue down a road through the scrub. What was going on? Then, "Get your cameras ready." For what? On what side of the road? Ahead of us there a couple elephants on the road. We had no idea what was to come. "You're going to see something no group has seen here before." Well, that may have been an exaggeration, but suddenly there was an ENTIRE herd of elephants.

There were at least 50 of them. Basically just the head male elephant, the women, and the babies are in the herds. The other male elephants head out on their own and just enter the groups to procreate. Anyhow, we saw lots of baby elephants, protective mothers, and the male leader was huge. D estimated him to be about 70 years old. They were stomping, trumpeting, and occasionally looking menacingly towards us, in which case D would start the truck to be ready for an escape. There was also a little baby elephant that couldn't climb out of the waterhole, so we watched about five mother elephants trying to help him out. It was dramatic, but we finally saw the baby get out safely. We all felt so fortunate to have come upon such a cool scene, and we were glad to have a guide that knew what he was doing, but I know who would have lost if the elephants decided to stampede us...
We've seen many groups of zebra;
almost every type of antelope-like creature that exists in dry parts of southern Africa; rhino; and lots of birds, including eagles. Every night in our campsites we have lots of jackal. I've realized that jackals really aren't that scary, they're just opportunistic animals trying to steal a little dinner.
We saw a lot of ostriches when we were driving through the south, and there up here in the north as well. They're not the most exotic creatures, so we were never that awed by them, until today...we saw ostrich sex! First, the female fluffs her feathers, then the male chases the female, who runs away. Then the male does this dance where he opens up his wings and bops from side to side.
Finally, overcome by the dance, the female sits down, then male sits on top of her. They do their thing for a few minutes, then the male gets up and walks away, leaving the female still sitting in the grass.
The waterhole at the camp where we're staying tonight is quite active, and there were several elephants and a few rhinos there at sunset.


They were replaced by 10+ giraffes,
and later on the rhinos and elephants returned. Reports from members of our group were of a 15 minute elephant fight around midnight!
We've seen other animals antics also - impalas playing,
wildebeest crashing around, and elephants challenging each other.
But we haven't seen any lions yet, although we heard some at AfriCat and around our campsite last night. We'll be waking up early tomorrow morning for one last drive to look for lions before we head out of the park- maybe we'll see our lion then...