The countdown is on. Three weeks until I’m cruising down the runway, bound for Namibia for a couple of years. What I’m hoping to experience:
Okaukuejo [in Etosha National Park] has become world-famous. it is conveniently situated on the edge of the rest camp, separated only by a stone wall and overlooked by a paved promenade dotted with trees and benches. Visitors need not even leave the camp to partake of the drama of the bush, and even at night can sit, theatre-style, gazing upon the floodlit arena which hosts all manner of animals, each in turn making its way to the water to quench its thirst.
The lons too are aware of the procession, and as the sun subsides in scarlet splendour, make their own entrance to the scene. Giraffes shuffle nervously in the background, and apparently decide they will drink some other time, tomorrow perhaps. Kudu and springbok turn away, thirsty. And a lone wildebeest canters crazily into the distance. We shiver involunvarily, excited, for lions have that effect. Two male lions, shaggy-maned, sleek and sinuous, crouchto drink while four lionesses and a lone cub drape themselves in golden languor at the base of a gaunt, long-dead leadwood tree.
After a while the roars abate, and peace settles uneasily over the water. Four elephants arrive, disdainful of the dozing lions, and in silence set about satisfying their thirst. The lion cub, about eight months old, stares in fascination, but stays close to the adults. Jackals scurry through the gloom and a pair of dikkops pipe in the night, their musical pi-pi-pi-peeuw-peeuw-peeuw-pi-pi-pi in sharp contrast to the fearsome roars of moments before. Then silently from out of the darkness appear two shapes, prehistoric images, relics of a million years past. Perhaps their ancestors knew Etosha in the days when desert was sea? Black rhinos! Gingerly almost, as if fully aware of the threat to their kind, the cow and her half-grown calf make their way to the water, stare short-sightedly about for some seconds, and then drink.
We sit silently, in awe, and watch. Lions, elephants and black rhinoceros together at one waterhole on our first night in Etosha. The dream is real. –Etosha, by Daryl and Sharna Balfour
I also hope to see the kinds of breathtaking views like these I came across on Flickr. I hope you’ll tune in from time to time to see how I do:
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