2Taylors

We were woken around 4am this morning by hyenas calling. There must have been quite a few of them and close by as it was very loud and went on for some time. We also had a jackal going through someone’s garbage bin during the night making a racquet, as even though Okaukuejo Camp is fenced there are still jackals wandering through the camp.

During our morning game drive we saw quite a number of animals including a few black backed jackals, some red hartebeest, gemsbok, a hyena and giraffes in the distance, heaps of springbok, some impala, a few kudu, ostriches and lots of birds. As we were heading back to camp for lunch we came around the corner and there were two male lions sitting very conveniently on the side of the road. One sat there cleaning himself making him look just like a big pussycat, not so sure though that I would want to give him a pat. They sat there for quite some time but eventually a car annoyed them so they took off into the bush.

Our afternoon drive was pretty unsuccessful until the last few kilometres when out of the bush came a lioness, then a few minutes later a lion and then another one until there were finally 6 all together. They came out of the bush, walked about 2 metres from our (checked out something on our car which we have no idea what it was they were looking at) and then laid themselves on the road. One of them decided to plonk itself down about a metre from my window, needless to say my window then went up! It was pretty cool and made us late back to camp as they shut the gate at sunset, but they didn’t say anything and we weren’t the only ones who were late.

After dinner we walked down to the floodlit waterhole at Halali Camp. Talk about perfect timing – when we arrived there were 4 rhinos drinking and eating. 2 of them were having a bit of a tiff with each other on and off. They hung around for ages drinking and eating and again it was an excellent experience. The one annoying thing though was that 2 groups of people decided that silence didn’t apply to them, so they talked incessantly in supposed whispers and kept giggling the whole time. Some people are just so ignorant and rude!

Again we left camp early and our very first sighting just a couple of kilometres away was a lion, lioness and 4 very small cubs. They were all sitting in the short grass out in the open just a few metres from the road so it was perfect viewing. We watched them for some time as the cubs drank from their mother, played and tumbled around with each other. When we arrived there was one other car and they left not long after so we had them to ourselves for nearly the whole time. A definite highlight!

Hoping there would still be the same concentration of animals as there was yesterday afternoon, we headed back to the same area, but there was not a single giraffe to be seen. Just some zebras and the occasional wildebeest and springbok. We followed a spotted hyena for a while to see whether it would do anything interesting, but it finally disappeared into the bush, so no luck there. Apart from that we just saw the usual springboks, gemsboks, black backed jackals, wildebeests, giraffes, zebras, impalas and birds.

After leaving the park, we dropped in to see the Hoba Meteorite near Grootfontein. It is a pretty big lump of metal, which apparently weighs 54,000kg and landed on earth 80,000 years ago. You can actually see that it is made of metal and is worth a quick stop to have a look at.

Tonight we are staying at Roy’s Camp. A quirky place where the owner definitely has some creative talent and has made his mark from the campsites, to the amenities, the bar and pool. One of the ladies showers has a tree trunk in the corner, the pool uses an overflowing bathtub as a fountain and there are metal laundry tubs embedded in the walls with plants growing in them. We have a nice shaded, grassy site and are using their gas to cook a stew for a few hours for dinner tonight (better than using our own gas!).