Cape Cross Seal Reserve: I thought I had had enough of seals in
Antarctica, but that didn’t stop me from taking 200+ photos and
videos of them here! I had never seen so many seals before, and so up
close! They’ve built up a boardwalk so that at some times, you can be
inches from the seals. If I didn’t know better that their mouths are
full of bacteria and that they can be pretty vicious, I might have
tried to pet one. There are over 100,000 seals at the reserve and the
number doubles to 200,000 during breeding season. Some of the seals
were charming and posed for pictures… Others were mean and would run
up and try to bark you way like a guard dog does. The baby seals bleat
like sheep do. =)
Spitzkoppe: You can drive North along the skeleton coast and then into
the Namib desert for hours seeing nothing. Then out of nowhere, you
see these massive rock formations. They are particularly amazing at
sunset when they glow orange and red. We set up camp that night at the
foot of the mountains – it was our most beautiful campsite yet. We
went on a guided hike to see some rather unimpressive bushman
paintings so we made our own. On our way back, Zoe said, “I think
there’s a snake.” Her boyfriend Andy moderately lectures her and says,
“Zoe, saying “snake” in Africa is like saying “bomb” on a plane. Don’t
just say it.” Zoe then says, “Okay…. Snake.” (The snake was very well
camouflaged and at that point, about a foot away from Andy!) The snake
wasn’t that big, but probably deadly enough because if anyone had
stepped on it, it would have a long way to a hospital.
Brandberg Mountains: The Brandberg Mountains are yet another (random?)
natural formation in Namibia. The mountains house many bushmen
paintings including the famous White Lady. “The White Lady” is no lady
at all actually but the name stuck when someone mistakenly identified
the figure as a woman. (The figure is holding a weapon and wears a
penis.) To get to the white lady, we hiked in the mountains, crossed
nine streams, and spotted some very cool salamanders that were as
bright as highlighters!
Cheetah Park: I was expecting a zoo, but it almost seemed like we
drove to someone’s house to play with their pets that happened to be
cheetahs. The park is family-run and has tame cheetahs for petting and
then wild cheetahs that have usually been rescued/rehabilitated. There
were three tame ones that were freely roaming the property and much to
the resident dog’s jealousy, we all paid a lot of personal and camera
attention to two of the cheetahs. (They told us not to pet one of them
because she was grumpy.)We also got to watch a cheetah feeding in the
late afternoon. While in pickup trucks with trailers, approximately 16
cheetahs surrounded us and proceeded to meow, growl, and chirp until
they each got a ginormous raw giraffe steak.
Etosha National Park: Great game watching: Wildebeests, hartebeests,
zebra, giraffe, elephants, warthogs, ostrich, rhinos, springboks,
kudus, dik-diks, mongooses, vultures (and tons of other birds), a
honey badger, and a lion! We camped at Halali in the park. There is a
watering hole you can walk to and we were lucky to see four rhinos out
for a nightcap. On the way to the watering hole, I also ran into a
really nice Dutch girl I’d met in Draksensberg. Small world! The
highlight of the game drive was observing some pretty strange zebra
behavior: One zebra came up to another and there was a lot of sniffing
action. Mr. Zebra’s black penis started to show itself and then of
course there was more sniffing. Next, the sniffed zebra walked about
30 feet away and Mr. Zebra trailed closely behind. She took a dump, he
sniffed at her poo, and then made his own poo. The weirdest part was
that a third, non-pooing zebra got a hard on just observing all the
“action.” I think all of us watching made them all nervous and nothing
happened beyond that. Zebra mating rituals, if that’s what they were,
are so random!
We left Namibia soon after leaving Etosha. Hello Botswana!
