15 February 2010
Today we did game driving all day, we got up early, yet again, so most of us were falling asleep on the first drive. I was just about asleep, when I spotted a rhino and yelled out to everyone else. Best spot of the day. The others couldn’t believe it was me to spot it, after I’d spent most of the game drive snoozing. My dumb luck wins again. We sat and watched this magnificent creature for about an hour, it was wonderful to see it in the wild, rather than in a zoo. This is the first of the big five, and one of the hardest to spot, as they are on the endangered list.
We stopped at another camp site for lunch and I had a wander around. Lunch today consisted of last nights left over steak, but it was still good. I sat down and wrote some postcards and then went to lay by the pool, to catch up on some sleep in the sun loungers.
We left at about 2:30pm to go on the next game drive to the next site, which up until about an hour in was pretty uneventful. Just as I was about to resign myself to an afternoon of tree watching, we noticed at load of other cars parked by the side of the track. Lions. I could not believe what I was seeing. A family of about nine lions, with about four lionesses and five cubs, this is exactly what I have come to Africa to see, the big cats. We sat and watched the lions for about an hour and took lots of pictures, Phil even managed to get one of them yawning.
I can’t begin to express what it was like to see lions in the wild for the first time. Even as I write this I’ve got tears in my eyes it was such a moving experience. I basically hung out of the truck window with my camera, tears stinging in my eyes and knowing I would never want to visit a zoo again. They all sat under an Acacia tree, it was like something from a National Geographic documentary. The lionesses were majestic and the cubs were just so cute.
After the lions we saw hundreds of other animals Oryx, Impala, Springbok, Wildebeest, Zebra and Giraffes galore! There was a giraffe around every corner. We got into the last camp in Etosha at about 6pm and set up camp and had dinner. I went for a walk to get some postage stamps and managed to get myself a little giraffe for my animal collection.
I went down and sat by the waterhole and watched the sunset, honestly, you couldn’t have gotten a better view if you were looking at a postcard. The beautiful sunset of oranges and purples were reflected in the waterhole, with silhouettes of acacia trees setting off the beautiful sunset, with a few zebras throw in for good measure.
I am now sitting at the lone power point at our campsite, typing up my journal, in between shooing jackals away from me. They keep getting really close and I keep losing my train of thought. Sarah approached us, took one look at the jackal and asked him “are you rabid?” He’s not causing any strike he’s just looking at me, so I’ll leave him be.
