Friday, March 31, 2017

First adventures in Namibia (January-February 2017)


Rock patterns in Etosha

Thunder Bay, March 29, 2017

So now I'm only two months behind on my blog.  With any luck, within a week I might have brought everything up to date; it feels good to be catching up, rather than falling further behind!

First Steps in Namibia:  Quiver Trees and Rainstorms

When I last left you, we were entering Namibia, my 132nd country and number 78 on Terri's life list. We immediately lost the asphalt road that we had been following on the South African side of the border, but the Namibian dirt road was in excellent condition and it was easy to steam along at 75 km/h in comfort and safety.  There was next to no traffic as there was next to no population on this dry landscape.  We stopped in briefly for fuel and to pay our road tolls (N$ 259, or about US$20) in the small town of Aroab, then continued along our way.  The landscape had changed, becoming more varied and dramatic than on the other side of the border, with escarpments, plains, pans, tiny volcanic cones and dramatic haphazard piles of huge fractured boulders.  We made our way to Keetmanshoop and continued 15 km out of town to the lovely oasis of the Quiver Tree Forest.  

Terri looks very nervous as she pets the cheetah!
Quiver trees (Aloe dichotoma) are endemic to Namibia and the Northern Cape in South Africa. They're a distinctive tree, with fat trunks and stubby branches slightly reminiscent of baobabs, but with a golden flaky bark and a few more leaves.  The campsite is on the edge of one of the densest concentrations of these trees to be found anywhere, and is a wonderful spot to stay; we liked it so much that we stayed an extra day!  It's on a commerical farm, and one of the highlights is the fact that the farmer, Coenrad, has four cheetahs who were found abandoned as babies and raised by him. At 5:30 pm every day he feeds them, and allows his guests to come into the enclosures with him and pet the oldest, tamest cheetah on the head while she devours her meat.  It was a slightly unnerving activity, as the picture of Terri shows:  it's hard to be completely at ease when you're that close to a big hungry cat!  Coenrad also has a pet warthog, and I was never very comfortable around it either, with its huge tusks.  Later events would confirm my instinctive unease.







Rosy-faced lovebirds at Quiver Tree Forest
That night we cooked up a pot of spaghetti and Terri ended up hiding in the cab of Stanley as a massive thunderstorm swept in, complete with huge gusts of wind and dramatic flashes of lightning. I was on cooking duty, so I put on my raincoat and got wet until supper was ready, then climbed into Stanley to eat.  It was rather ironic that we had come to Namibia to escape the rains in South Africa only to get rained on apocalyptically on the first night in the country!

We slept poorly, as the storm left and returned twice more with flashes of lightning, stertorous thunder and deafening impacts of huge raindrops on Stanley's aluminum roof.  In addition I had left the waterproof window flaps unzipped to give us some fresh air, so by the time I had woken up and realized what was happening, our bedding and mattress had gotten quite wet.  We woke up at 8:15 and had a lazy big breakfast, deciding over bacon and eggs to stay another night.  I did some juggling and played some guitar before the clouds parted suddenly and illuminated the quiver trees.  I grabbed my camera and Terri and I headed over to walk around, admiring the other-worldly boulders and trees.  It was very pretty, with the golden bark contrasting beautifully with the deep blue sky.




Quiver tree bark
I did some yoga that morning, and then saw even better light break out on the quiver trees, so I ran off to take some more photos.  When I got back to Stanley, Terri greeted me convulsed in giggles. When she finally was able to speak, she pointed to my yoga mat, and I saw that it was shredded.  She said that she had turned her back, and when she looked around, the warthog was busy destroying the mat.  Coenrad wasn't terribly surprised, and kindly gave me a blue camping foam mat to use.  I guess it was an example of a downward-facing hog position?

Love the toes raised to stay off the hot rock
Blue-headed agama at Giant's Playground
We then pulled out the bicycles and rode 5 km up the dirt road (it was a bit washboarded, making cycling a bit annoying) to the Giant's Playground, another scenic spot owned by Coenrad.  It was now genuinely hot in the blazing midday sun, but we still walked dutifully around the hiking trail, taking photos of the dramatically perched boulders.  It was actually the wildlife that caught our eye even more, with gaily-coloured lizards sunning themselves atop each outcrop, many of them the spectacular blue-headed agama (Agama atra).  There were plenty of birds as well, and the views out over the seemingly endless expanse of ancient boulders made us feel like very insignificant time travellers.  

Quiver Tree Forest
Properly baked by the sun and the infrared radiation off the hot rocks, we cycled back to the Quiver Tree Forest; it was a lot easier going downwind and downhill!  It was nice to beat the heat in the swimming pool, but I managed to drag myself away for a run before flopping back into the pool.  We watched the cheetah feeding again, and then bought ourselves some game meat from Coenrad.  Terri stir-fried some springbok for dinner, battling a huge wind that blew out the flame on our gas stove twice. We managed to finish eating and wash up before the night's storm blew in. 

Quiver Tree Forest
Tuesday, January 24th we were up and off in reasonable time, but we lingered a bit in the metropolis of Keetmanshoop getting ourselves sorted for our new country:  groceries, SIM cards, Namibian dollars and a new pair of reading glasses for Terri.  I also climbed under the vehicle for my daily top-up of the transfer case oil, a process at which I was becoming more and more adept.  We eventually set off north along the asphalt of the B1, the main north-south highway, eating meat pies and listening to an audiobook until we heard a noise from the back.  I stopped and had a look, but didn't see anything obviously wrong.  I set off again, but within thirty seconds I realized something was drastically wrong.  The initial sound had been the sound of a back tire puncturing, and by now it was flat and the tire was a shredded mass of rubber.  It took nearly an hour to change the tire, most of that time being spent on the irritating process of removing the spare tire from underneath the camper.  We put the wrecked tire inside Stanley and drove off in search of a tire dealership.




More quiver trees
In the town of Mariental we found a garage that sold us a nice new tire and mounted it, and put it back under the camper (the longest part of the operation, even for trained professionals).  It was now too late to drive to Sesriem as we had planned, so we decided to find a place to stay in the vicinity. We ended up in the Hardap Nature Reserve, a small wildlife park based around a big water reservoir about 20 km outside Mariental.  It was a surprisingly beautiful spot, well set up for domestic tourists. There were excellent camping facilities and a lot of well-built cottages, and a fabulous view out over the reservoir.  Terri cooked up some lasagne in our oven and we sat outside around a campfire until (inevitably) a downpour rolled in and drove us inside and to bed.  That made three straight nights of heavy rain, and it was starting to annoy us.

Namib Nights:  The Beautiful Dunes of Sossusvlei

The next morning we were up by 6:45 and rolling by 8:45.  We took some time to do a very short game drive inside the game reserve before leaving; we had been told that there were black rhinos to be seen, but we saw none of them.  A few gemsboks and springbok did make an appearance and lots of ostriches pecked away at the grass on the plains next to the reservoir, but the jeep track was muddy and promised to get worse, so we eventually pulled the plug on the safari and headed off towards Sesriem.

Dessicated desert wood at Sesriem
We bumped our way back to Mariental, bought our usual lunch of steak pies and then drove west towards the coast and the Namib Desert.  The road was paved at first, and then turned into more excellent recently-graded gravel.  The scenery was fabulous, with sweeping vistas of canyons and a big descent from the interior plateau into a Tibetan-style gravel plain ringed by steep desert mountains.  Namibia was certainly delivering as promised on the landscape front.  We arrived in the tiny outpost of Sesriem at 4 pm, got our (very expensive) tent site and set up camp.  It's a big campsite, very popular with large overland trucks, although the tent sites are sufficiently widely spaced to give the illusion of being alone in the desert.  We bobbed in the pool for a while, although it was very crowded with overlanders, then went back to our campsite for juggling, yoga and dinner.  We watched a dramatic sunset, then stoked up a roaring campfire and sat out under the stars, revelling in the surroundings and the clear, rainless skies.









Ghostly early morning misty dunes at Sossusvlei
Sossusvlei morning
We were up very early the next morning for our visit out to the iconic sand dunes of Sossusvlei.  We were up at 4:45 and were the third vehicle through the access gate at 5:30.  It was still pretty dark as we sped along the paved road between unseen dunes.  Twice spotted hyenas appeared out of the darkness, loped across the asphalt and vanished again into the gloom.  It was 60 km to Sossusvlei, and as we passed Dune 45, scene of many a tourist snapshot, it got light enough to see that the dunes were enveloped in thick morning mist; we were not going to get a picture-perfect sunrise.  We drove on and arrived at the end of the pavement.  Since Stanley's 4WD wasn't working, we weren't comfortable trying to drive the last 4 km along a deep sand track, so we paid an outrageous N$ 150 (US$ 11) for a one-way lift to Sossusvlei itself, then set off on foot.





Tree in the pan at Sossusvlei
Sossusvlei is easily the most famous tourist sight in the entire country of Namibia.  The Namib Desert extends along the Atlantic Coast, and is full of high ancient sand dunes, but there is next to no access to the heart of this sand sea.  The only place where the average tourist can get into the dunes is here, where a dead-end road penetrates to within 50 km of the sea, and it is justifiably on everyone's Namibian itinerary.  As we walked across small salt pans and then up a huge red dune, we paused to look around at the mist still shrouding the nearby dunes; they weren't going anywhere just yet, and actually made for a good mysterious atmosphere in photos.  We got to the summit ridge of the huge Big Daddy Dune, then ran down to the bottom to a huge white pan that apparently fills with water once every few years after exceptional rains.





Sossusvlei trees
It actually looked at first glance as though there was water at the bottom, but closer inspection revealed that it was just the greyish rippled surface of the hard salty sand.  Ghostly trees stick out of the pan surface in a way that just begs to be photographed, and in places we could see where the movement of the huge dunes (they must be well over 100 metres high, not quite as high as the dunes at Dunhuang in China, but still pretty enormous) had partially buried the trees.  The ripples of the dunes are impressive, and make complicated four-sided or five-sided shapes that, seen from above, give the reason for their name of "star dunes".  We wandered around, taking photos of trees and dessicated wood and dunes and generally oohing and aahing at the picturesque beauty of the place, until the big tourist groups started arriving and we made our way back to the track.





Abstract shapes in the Sossusvlei pan
We had planned to walk back to where Stanley was parked, but as we hiked along, an empty shuttle vehicle came by and offered us an unofficial lift back for a reduced price, payable in cash to the driver.  We said yes, paid up our N$50 and held on as we slalomed along through the sand, past hapless tourists who were getting mired in sand going the other direction.  We pulled out our cooking gear and had a big breakfast of fried eggs before setting off on our second mission of the day, a hike out to lovely Hidden Vlei.  An indistinct line of wooden posts led across the desert towards the vlei (pan), and after 45 minutes of walking, we found ourselves looking down on a pan that was even more dramatic than Sossusvlei itself.  More photographs and admiring the views, and then it was time to trudge back to the parking lot.  

Sossusvlei dunes
We didn't want to drive all the way back to Sesriem, as we wanted to see the dunes later in the afternoon and maybe at sunset, so we popped Stanley's roof and slipped up into bed for a well-earned nap.  It was very hot indeed, but we had positioned Stanley under the only shade tree in the parking lot, and with the side flaps open, there was a strong cooling breeze blowing through, and we dozed, read and dozed some more until it was 4:30 pm and the parking lot was completely empty.  It was nice having this restful option for the hot part of the day.

Dunes between Sesriem and Sossusvlei
We drove back towards Sesriem with the idea of taking photos at Dune 45, the closest dune to the main road, but when we got there a big noisy group of Chinese tourists was shouting their way up the side of the dune, and it didn't look nearly as photogenic as we had hoped it would, so we decided to head back to Sesriem before dark.  It was a beautiful drive back between the sinous dunes, and we kept stopping for more photos.  We stirfried up some more springbok from Quiver Tree and then sat out under the stars with a crackling fire and some whisky.  It was an exceptionally clear night, and by the time we headed to bed, we had seen 15 separate satellites and 4 bright meteors in the sky, quite a satisfying total.






Canyons and Flamingoes:  The Road to the Coast

Part of the Kuiseb Canyon
It was distinctly cold at night at Sesriem, and I woke up regretting not using my down sleeping bag.  I topped up our transfer case oil (we seemed to be leaking about 150 ml a day, which meant that we had enough to last until we had to return to Windhoek) and we headed off northwest towards Walvis Bay and the coast.  It was a spectacular drive, along dirt roads that snaked past dramatic canyons, along a plateau backed by desolate rocky mountains and then through a crazed landscape of tilted strata dissected by the dry bed of the Kuiseb River.  We saw lots of signs for campgrounds along the road, and afterwards we realized that this area is a prime destination for people looking for isolated camping under the stars in the desert.  We cut through the Namib-Naukluft National Park, past intriguing-looking tracks leading to remote campsites, telling ourselves that in the future we would be back to explore in greater detail.  The Kuiseb Canyon was beautiful, and we saw in the distance Carp Cliff Cave, where German geologists Henno Martin and Hermann Korn spent part of their two years on the run during World War Two, told in the book The Sheltering Desert.  We climbed up the other side of the canyon and then we were on the desolate gravel plains that extend to the seashore.  By mid-afternoon we were driving into the orderly suburbs of Walvis Bay, a former British/South African enclave within Namibia, and setting up camp in a very urban campground called Lagoon Chalets. It was very windy indeed, and we were glad for the shelter of walls and trees, although it was still challenging to keep our stove lit.

We left Stanley and went out for a stroll towards the waters of Walvis Bay.  It's one of the most important birdwatching spots in all of southern Africa, with its shallows and salt flats drawing in dozens of waders and shore birds.  As soon as we got out to the wide walkway along the seafront, we saw a pink wave of lesser and greater flamingoes congregated in their hundreds.  We walked along, taking photos, and spotted other species:  pied avocets with their strange upturned beaks, various terns and gulls, and white-fronted plovers.  We had our eyes peeled for a relatively rare shorebird, the chestnut-banded plover, found in only a handful of locations, of which Walvis Bay is the most likely. Search as we might, we didn't see any of them, and after a while we were cold and tired of the raking wind, so we walked back to camp and supper.  I ended up chatting with our neighbours, a couple whose old Land Cruiser had a license plate that I didn't recognize.  It turned out to be Rwandan; he is Canadian and she is a Canadian who was Rwandan by birth, and they spent time every year in Rwanda, driving each year to other countries to explore.  It reminded us that we were only two border crossings from East Africa, where we had hoped to go on this leg of Stanley's Travels,  Perhaps next year?  I braaied some lamb chops for dinner and then sorted through photos after dinner.

Flamingoes at Walvis Bay
By this point we had made some executive decisions on our upcoming travel plans.  I picked a date out of the air (since we didn't yet know my father's surgery date) and decided that I would fly to Canada on March 16th, while Terri would head to New Zealand to see her family on the same date. We also knew that trying to tackle the rough tracks of Damaraland and the Kaokoveld, an area that we both wanted to visit, would be a bad idea without our 4WD working, and that we were going to be out of the country from February 7th to February 17th, doing some tour guiding in South Africa.  During that period of time, we wanted Stanley to be undergoing surgery to repair the transfer case and turn Stanley back into a proper 4WD vehicle.  Given those constraints, we decided that we would go up to Etosha National Park, and stop in at a garage in Windhoek to make arrangements for the transfer case work en route.  We would then poke around Etosha until it was time for our flight to Johannesburg.  We were also coming around to the idea that we might not be able to sell Stanley, at least not for the price we wanted for him, so finding a place to store him in Windhoek was also a priority.

Lone greater flamingo, Walvis Bay
Saturday, January 28th saw us getting up a bit lazily.  Terri was feeling a bit under the weather, and we wanted to do laundry before heading out, so we lingered over breakfast and internet before driving out to the shore for more birdwatching.  The wind had dropped a great deal, and birdwatching was a bit more enjoyable than the day before.  We drove along the shore south to the salt works, where some 90% of all of South Africa's salt is produced by evaporation, leaving intriguing patterns of crystal growth in the murky brine.  We did well on bird species, with greater and lesser flamingoes in great numbers, along with pied avocets, common sandpipers, ruddy turnstones, common terns and Cape teals.  If our 4WD had been working, we could have continued around the bay out to Pelican Point to see pelicans and seals, but that would have to wait for another visit.  It was wonderful to see all the birds lining the shore, such a contrast to the bleak gravel plains inland.  We even startled a pair of black-backed jackals drinking at a little pond; I wonder if they catch unwary birds from time to time?



Tennis and Logistics in Windhoek

Salt evaporation pool, Walvis Bay
From Walvis Bay we drove to Swakopmund, about 40 km along the Atlantic coast.  It's an area of tourist development, but to my eye it's too desolate and wind-swept to be really appealing.  It's very popular with fishermen, and every second pickup truck seemed to be carrying an array of long surf-casting rods, usually sticking up from the front bumper like a forest of CB radio aerials.  We got to Swakopmund, bought diesel and then decided to leave this German resort town for our next visit.  We got onto the main road and cruised towards Windhoek, keeping an unsuccessful eye out for welwitschia, a prehistoric-looking plant endemic to the gravel plains just inland from the coast.

It was an easy drive into Windhoek, but we hadn't picked a place to stay, and we ended up wasting a lot of time looking for one.  The next day was the Australian Open men's tennis finals, between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, and as a huge Federer fan, I was anxious to watch what might very possibly end up being their last great match, so we wanted an indoor venue with satellite TV.  You wouldn't think that would be so hard to find in a major city, but it was after dark by the time we finally found Pension Cori, a little oasis of gardens and gentility tucked away behind a non-descript outside wall.  Rini, the irrepressible South African woman who runs the place, welcomed us in and enlisted my help reprogramming the satellite TV feed to get the tennis.

It was a good break from the road.  We slept well in a huge bed, sleeping late into the morning, before I settled down to watch what turned out to be a match for the ages; after 3 hours and 37 minutes of oscillating fortunes, great shots on both sides and enough suspense and excitement that I was jumping around the hotel room celebrating every Federer point won in the final set, Federer finally put his demons to rest by coming from behind in the fifth set to win an improbable title at age 35.  It was worth every penny that we spent to stay indoors!  We went out afterwards for a late lunch/early dinner, a tough task on a Sunday afternoon when most of Windhoek has rolled up the shutters, but eventually we found a steakhouse for a festive meal of spare ribs.

Monday, January 30th found us loth to move on, and it was 11 am before we finished packing and set off.  Our plan was to find a place to do repairs on Stanley before we left town.  Gearbox and Diff Doctor, our first port of call, proved to be a pretty professional-looking outfit, so we arranged to drop Stanley off the following Monday for what promised to be two weeks of work.  We stopped in to get my camera CCD cleaned (the relentless dust had worked its way into the interior of the camera and I had to use Adobe Lightroom to remove dust spots from every photo); the owner wouldn't do the cleaning for me, but sold me some exortitantly expensive cleaning pads to do the job myself.  We stocked up Stanley's lovely new Engel fridge with food at the Pick'n'Pay, and then headed out of town towards Windhoek airport, where we knew that there was a campground that also stored vehicles; the plan was to stay there and figure out whether it was where we might want to leave Stanley if we couldn't sell him.

Looking out into Etosha Pan
Ondekaremba proved to be a very lovely spot, out in the bush, far enough from the road and the airport not to hear any noise from them.  Windhoek is far enough inland from the dry coast to not be a desert; instead it's classic African bush, with lots of acacia trees.  There was a lot of birdlife around, and we had a pleasant stroll around the grounds before eating leftover stirfry and vegetables while stewing up beef for future suppers.  It was another pretty place to spend the night, and we talked once again about how lucky we were to be able to lead such a charmed lifestyle on the road.  That evening we were treated to a good view of Venus next to the slender semicircle of the new moon low in the western sky.

Magical Wildlife Moments in Etosha

Early morning spotted hyena
We left Windhoek slowly the next day, with a late wakeup after a solid night's sleep.  We did some stretching before settting off, and stopped in at the Trans Kalahari Inn, another possible option for storing Stanley, to book rooms for the following week.  We drove into town, stocked up again at the grocery store and then finally set off towards the north at 12:20 pm. It was an easy drive through pleasant scenery:  lush hilly woodland at first, then drier plateau, then a broad plain dotted with remnant mud puddles from the most recent rains.  We hadn't booked any accommodation at Etosha yet, and we had decided to stay outside the park on the first night to maximize use of our park entrance fees.  We ended up at Etosha Safari Camp, only 10 km from the main southern Andersson gate, by 4:30.  It proved to be a wonderful place to stay, with widely-spaced sites, lots of tree cover, a pool (in which we swam to beat the heat), a funky bar area and lots of birds, including our first view of the lesser masked weaver.  We sat out beside the camp fire that night suddenly aware of how little time remained for us in Africa; after months of travel, we were down to a few weeks of camping before we had to fly away.

Springbok bucks jousting
Our three days in Etosha National Park were among the best game-viewing experiences of our eight months in Africa.  Etosha is one of the legendary parks of Africa, and for good reason.  It is a very flat expanse, centred on the immense Etosha Pan, and much of the west of the park has little high vegetation for animals to hide behind.  It's full of springbok and gemsbok and hartebeest, and of the predators that eat them, and the animals are generally easy to see.

Spotted hyena drinking right beside Stanley
We set off from our campsite by 6:05, early enough that we had twenty minutes of waiting at the park gate before it opened exactly at sunrise.  We drove along the paved road to the main rest camp at Okaukuejo, where we paid for our three days of park fees and one night of camping (the plan was to drift eastward, one rest camp a day, for three days before exiting the east side of Etosha).  Properly paid up, we set off to the west to what our guidebook proclaimed to be one of the iconic sights of the park, the Phantom Forest.  It was a distinctly underwhelming visual experience, but at least it provided a picnic spot for a hearty eggs and toast breakfast.  There were thousands of springbok about, but not much else, and we headed back east towards the edge of the pan after breakfast.  It was a very striking view out into the immensity of the pan, like looking over a perfectly calm ocean, except made of salty mud.  We found the sad remnants of a giraffe who had been devoured near one of the waterholes, and saw lots of what birdwatchers like to call LBJs:  Little Brown Jobs, the non-descript species of lark and pipit and flycatcher that all blend together to those (like us) who are not committed twitchers.  We did in the end manage to identify the spike-heeled lark, Stark's lark and the chat flycatcher.  By 1:30 we were done and driving back to camp, satisfied but not overwhelmed by our day of wildlife.  The short-grass plains around Okaukuejo gave us, in addition to the springbok and gemsbok that you would expect in dry areas, a few wildebeest and ostriches and lots of zebras, along with a couple of black-backed jackals and lots of cute ground squirrels.

Black-winged stilt
We went out to the illuminated waterhole that evening in hopes of seeing black rhinos coming in for water, but we struck out.  The beautiful starry skies were some compensation, but we were keen on black rhinos, which we had only seen once on the entire trip, right at the beginning in Kruger.

Magnificent lioness
Two lionesses drinking in the early morning near Okaukuejo
We were up early the next morning as the entire campsite arose noisily around us.  By 6:50 we were driving out of the camp gates, hoping for early-morning wildlife magic.  It soon arrived, in the form of two juvenile spotted hyenas whom we saw loping along the plain with their peculiar droop-shouldered gait.  They strolled right up to the road and stopped to drink water from a puddle two metres from where Terri had parked Stanley.  We sat breathless for several minutes watching these beautiful animals up close, and got a number of good photos. It was an unforgettable encounter with an animal often viewed with fear and revulsion by humans.  No sooner had they wandered off than we drove into Nebrowni waterhole to find two rare blue cranes and, right beside them, two magnificent lionesses in the prime of life, drinking side by side after a hard night's hunting.  The lionesses lingered for a long time before stalking off with regal air, one after the other.  There was a party of zebras passing behind the waterhole and the zebras very nearly walked right into the retreating lionesses, which would have made an already amazing sighting even more improbable.  At the last second the zebras cottoned on and moved away from the lead lioness who was starting to look both hungry and very interested.

Blue crane
European bee-eater and its coat of many colours
We spent the rest of the morning meandering from waterhole to waterhole along the southern edge of Etosha Pan, through alternating bands of short-grass plains and thick mopane woodland.  We saw more blue cranes, including two babies, along with baby wildebeests, hundreds of spindly-legged springbok infants and more jackals.  The sky began to darken as we drove, and we began to get anxious about getting stuck in mud in a downpour without any working 4WD.




Black-faced impala at Halali waterhole
Remarkably we made it to Halali without getting wet.  We set up camp and then walked up to Halali waterhole where we had a slightly bizarre fight with a tour group of older French tourists from an overland truck.  The afternoon before at Okaukuejo waterhole everyone had been very well-behaved, obeying the "Silence Please" signs and watching the birds and animals peacefully and amicably.  This group was loud, boorish and refused to pipe down even when we pointed out the signs.  The tour guide, who would usually in cases like this try to keep his unruly tourists in line, was instead very pugnacious and we nearly came to blows.  I didn't see it, but Terri saw that he actually pulled out a knife to use on me.  It seemed a bizarre over-reaction to being asked to obey the rules.  Luckily they finished their picnic and wandered off, leaving us in possession of the waterhole.  We again didn't see any rhinos, but the pond was alive with turtles of all sizes, and a single black-faced impala showed up to drink later.  It's not a separate species, just a race or subspecies, but the addition of a big black blaze down the nose completely changes the look of the common impala to something a big more majestic and mysterious.

Lesser flamingoes, Etosha
That afternoon and evening, in an almost deserted campground, we chatted with our fellow campers: a party of three Americans and an Irishman travelling with both a guitar and a mandolin; a pair of Brits who had bought their own car in South Africa (like us), who had used the same "agent" in Johannesburg to register their car (based, it turned out, on our recommendation on the Africa4x4Cafe website); and Butch and Wendy, a pair of very well-travelled South Africans who had a good look at Stanley in case Butch's brother might be interested in buying him.  Wendy, though, after looking at Stanley and all the gear that comes with him, opined that we would be crazy to sell him, since he was so optimized for the kind of travel that we wanted to do.  That evening, talking it over, we decided that she was right and that we should give up on trying to sell Stanley and store him instead for future use.


Looking out into the immensity of Etosha Pan at a gathering storm
Eurasian hobby
Our last full day in Etosha was rainy.  It rained during the night, stopped and then restarted at dawn, leaving us to sleep in until 7 and have a lazy getaway after a big breakfast.  It rained off and on all day, gently at first and then with frightening ferocity, out of a pitch-black sky, in the afternoon.   We made our way out onto a lookout causeway that leads a couple of kilometres onto the soft surface of the pan and felt swallowed up by the immensity of the space around us.  Gaily-coloured European bee-eaters, Eurasian hobbies and red-necked falcons played on the posts marking the edge of the causeway, and suddenly, out on the pan surface, we saw the bird that we had failed to spot at Walvis Bay:  the chestnut-banded plover.  We drove back towards solid ground in a jubilant mood, a feeling further improved by spotting hundreds of flamingoes in a little waterhole beside the road. The sky was darkening in front of our eyes, and we seemed to be headed straight towards a wall of blackness. The skies ruptured open as we headed towards the camp at Nemutoni, and we were fortunate to make it off off the jeep track we were following and onto the solidity of the main gravel road, as the tracks were beginning to flood.


I think it might be about to rain!
At Halali we sheltered for a couple of hours in the restaurant before the rain stopped long enough for us to check out the waterhole:  again there were no rhinos, and we retreated to Stanley for supper before rain put paid to the idea of sitting outside.

Black-backed jackal
Saturday, February 4th saw us doing one last game drive before bidding farewell to the park, and we ended up glad that we did.  We went out first in search of Damara dik-diks, a tiny antelope that we had yet to tick off our list.  Despite some dedicated searching, we came up empty-handed, but we had lots of meetings with very skittish giraffes and lots of raptors, followed by our first sightings of Cape shoveller ducks and African shelducks at Klein Namutoni waterhole.

That is a serious kick by a fleeing giraffe
We gave up on dik-diks and took a lap around Fischerpan, the easternmost extension of Etosha Pan.  It was partly full of water and looked striking, particularly when we drove across it with water on both sides.  We spotted blue cranes at one waterhole and saw lots of elephant tracks in the mud of the pan, although we struck out on elephants themselves.  Then, just as we were rounding the back part of Fischerpan I spotted what seemed at first to be bat-eared foxes in the distance.  I pulled out my binoculars and realized that these "foxes" had stripes and a familiar droop-shouldered look.  We pulled out our mammal guide and checked, and, sure enough, we had hit it very lucky.  What we were looking at were three juvenile aardwolves, a species of small hyena that lives entirely on termites and is usually strictly nocturnal.  We were very lucky to see them; many guides and biologists that we talked to had told us that they had never seen aardwolves, and we had more or less given up on ever seeing them.  We sat watching them in the distance, suddenly very happy, and it was hard to tear ourselves away and start driving out of the park.
Our lucky sighting of three juvenile aardwolves
Standing atop the world's largest space rock, the Hoba Meteorite
We checked out of the park at Von Lindquist Gate and started driving towards Tsumeb.  Our destination was the Hoba Meteorite, the largest meteorite ever discovered.  It took a while to get there, but it was a pretty drive and well worth the detour.  At 64 tons, it's an immense chunk of iron mixed with nickel, pitted and melted on the outside from its fall through Earth's atmosphere.  It's a bit strange that there is no crater associated with such a big rock; maybe it hit Earth with a low relative speed, travelling in the same basic direction as our planet.  We took some photos and then began the long retreat towards Windhoek.  We ended up spending the night at an unexpected gem of a place, Otjira Lodge.  Our campsite was away from all the others, and we had a great walk through the bush, perfect stars and a massive campfire on which we grilled some great pork chops after yet another postcard-perfect sunset.  We told ourselves that we would make it back to Otjira on our next loop through Namibia.

From there our first loop through Namibia was more or less over.  We spent the next morning chatting with an Austrian couple, Manfred and Barbara, who had lived in Namibia for 25 years, and were full of great information on where to camp in Damaraland and the Kaokoveld.  We also admired their perfectly-engineered camper, particularly their electrically adjusted air shocks to level the camper on uneven ground.  Then it was time to drive back to the city and out to the Trans-Kalahari Inn, where we booked in for three nights.  Monday morning saw us dropping Stanley at the Gearbox and Diff Doctor, running errands in town (chiefly getting measured for new glasses for both of us, taking advantage of favourable exchange rates and low labour costs to save a lot of money for something we both needed) and then catching a taxi back to the Trans-Kalahari for two lazy days.  Wednesday morning found us on an early flight to Johannesburg for ten days of work.  We would return on February 17th, ready for one last month of Stanley's Travels 1.0.


Etosha sunset



















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