Going Foreign: Personal Investigation Period I (Etosha and Waterberg Plateau)

Personal Investigations are one way that our organization retains control of its volunteers – rather than giving us holiday time which implies that the time is ours, we are given one week personal and one week professional investigation periods every six months. Because we were denied permission to attend the wedding of two DI friends of ours in Zambia Brian and I decided to take a week off anyway and see a bit of the country.

Etosha was the first safari experience for both of us and it did not disappoint. It was without a doubt fantastic, and to quote Brian ‘the best holiday I have ever been on’. Etosha is 22,000km2 of protected parkland and is designed more for the self-drive safari than the hired one. So early Friday morning we set off in our rented red Toyota Corolla (very inconspicuous for the wildlife) filled to the brim with tents, mattresses, guidebooks, tons of food and a basket full of homemade cookies.

Friday: Arrived at the park at 9am and as we were signing in a man leaving the park told us there was a lion in the grass just ahead! Drove until we saw about 40 wildebeast and 40 zebra standing stock still at attention staring intently at something on the other side of the road. The lion was a bit far away but we could see her from our car, although she was not as interested in hunting as in laying down for a rest. Spent the day driving around the east side of the park. From both the road and the waterholes we saw for the first time: warthogs, violet breasted roller birds, ostriches, springbok, zebra, wildebeest, giraffes (drinking!), kudu, gemsbok, and bustard birds. Half an hour from our campsite in the middle of the park we had seen pretty much everything I had come there to see and more (as I had not expected to see any of the big cats) except an elephant. Brian was just remarking that maybe the elephants were still to the west of the park as it was not the height of dry season yet when he slammed on his brakes and pointed out a huge male elephant not 25 metres away eating mopane, whom I would have missed. I am not a very good wildlife spotter, turns out. It was both exhilarating and terrifying, as the elephant seemed to be fanning himself with his ears which we were not sure was because of the heat or if he was warning us to back off. We reversed a bit to get out of his path and watched him as he ate and then crossed the road right in front of our car. That was when I felt truly in Africa! That night at our campsite we met two Australian guys spending 6-8 months doing the Cape to Cairo route. We ended up drinking with them for the night, fleeing from an aggressive honey badger rummaging through out campsite trash, watching Ghana lose dramatically to Paraguay and meeting a bunch of American legal students in Namibia here observing the current Caprivi Strip succession case.

Saturday: Five minutes after leaving the campsite as the sun was rising, we literally came upon a leopard sitting on the side of the road! Scrambling for our camera we attempted to take some pictures while not scaring off the elusive cat sitting just outside the car window. He sat there for one or two minutes before slipping off into the tall grass. Two or three steps into the grass and he was invisible. It was amazing. However, having woken up without a plan, as a consequence we took the most ridiculous path in the park. Two hours of broken roads and dense mopane bush with no animals to be seen. Halfway through we heard the hiss of our front tire as it rolled over a thorn of the acacia tree and quickly deflated. We looked at each other, uncertain of what to do. Outside of the parks designated accommodation we were not allowed to leave the car, a seemingly logical rule to us after having seen the lion, the elephant, and the leopard. We spent a nervously silent ten minutes while Brian changed the tire and I acted as lookout. The rest of the day was a bit of a bust as we worried about not having a spare tire. However it redeemed itself that evening as we sat outside overlooking our campsites waterhole. From the bush emerged the elusive white rhino, which made his way down to the waterhole for a drink just as the red African sun was setting overhead. The perfect way to end the day.

Sunday: Crazy day. Spent 2 hours sitting at a waterhole hoping a lion would show. It didn’t but we did get to see two zebra fighting which is an amazing sight to see. Saw another male elephant at the in-house waterhole at our new restcamp (this time staying in a real room with beautiful princess mosquito nets, hot water, and crisp white sheets!). Decided to drive down to one of the entrance gates where people had seen lions the day before. As we were driving the car in front of us stopped forcing us to stop. Frantic finger pointing ensued as we realized that lying hidden by mopane trees was a male and female lion! More frantic grabbing of the camera. Utter disbelief as the male lion stood up and began to mate with the female lion! After sitting in amazement for a few minutes we started the car and began to drive on. Just as we were between two other cars the female lion decided to stand up and walked straight at my open window, turning left when she was maybe three yards away. The pair then proceeded to walk straight down the paved road. As we were now the first car in line we followed the two lions for a good five minutes as they promenaded down the road; we were in turn followed by five or six cars as well as a massive bus tour full of tourists hanging out the windows for a better shot. Eventually the lions turned into the scrub and we drove off, astonished. On our way back we were even more surprised to meet a baracade of cars and tour vehicles surrounding the two lovebird lions sleeping in the middle of the road. One idiot parent in the car in front of us let their child hang out the window to take a photo, which provoked the male lion who charged the little girl! Thankfully it was a warning and he settled down again next to the female. Eventually the cars began to move off and we drove past the lions, lying two feet away on the pavement. The strongest impression I got from this experience was just how powerful and huge their heads were.

That night at the waterhole in our new restcamp, Okaukuejo, was fantastic. There, under soft yellow light that the animals don’t seem to notice we saw five of the elusive, endangered, and aggressive black rhino. One was particularly aggressive that night and provoked a stand off and fight with the other rhino. It was amazing, at one point one rhino bucked in the air like a horse to warn the other one away. To make the evening even more special, we witnessed a massive male elephant scared away by one of the rhinos. It was a sight to behold such a massive creature left temporarily panicked and unsure by the snorts of a single rhino. Throughout the whole episode a giraffe watched bemusedly from a safe distance while black backed jackals ran around looking like tiny mice next to the giants around them. Who needs TV.

Monday: Woke up and went straight to a waterhole the visitors log had tipped off for lion sightings. We were not disappointed, and parked 25 metres away from a pride of lions. Seven lions – four adults and three cubs. We sat there for about an hour and witnessed something truly special. We saw cubs about a year old playing with each other and the grownups. I saw a female cub walk straight at our car and by the driver’s window towards a group of zebra grazing nearby and then mock charge them, practicing it seemed. I watched as an adult female played with a rock like a house cat chasing after a flashlight. The rock kept falling off the ledge and she had to try to roll it back up with her paws, without the help of a thumb. Her cubs tried to copy her play. When she ignored them they would try to encourage her to play with them through both enticement and provocation, biting her tail and nipping her back legs until she gently swatted at them. I’ll never forget it. That afternoon, back at Okaukuejo waterhole we saw 12 elephants troop in for a drink and to cool off by rolling in the waterhole and hosing water onto their backs using their trunks. And that evening after dark we saw 7 rhinos, both black and white and 16 elephants. One of the black rhinos was desperately trying to get some lovin’ from his partner but she was having none of it. Enough said.

Tuesday: On our way out of the park we stopped at the waterhole just at the gate in the hopes of seeing something before we left. We had repeated over and over again how lucky we had been in our surprise encounter with the mating pair of lions, and how getting to see lions mating was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Apparently not so once in a lifetime as you might think. At our last waterhole we again came across the mating pair. It seems that when a female lion is in heat she will go off with the male lion for four days, whereupon they mate every 12 minutes or so (or so we were told) without fail and without food. I don’t know about every 12 minutes, but after observing, along with 10 other tourist vehicles, for about 45 minutes we had seen another 2 of the elusive mating rituals. And yes, at the end, they both roar.

We spent the rest of the day driving to Waterberg Plateau, whose obvious natural characteristics have been put to use as a breeding conservancy for endangered animals such as the eland, and black and white rhinos.

Wednesday: Tuesday and Wednesday we relaxed at Waterberg, hiking the short trails and lying by the mostly empty pool. The baboons kept us entertained. Our last night there we took a ‘game drive’ to the top where we sat in a hide and watched wild buffalo, eland and a very skittish black rhino at the waterhole.

In all it was a fantastic holiday. Throughout the whole trip I was engrossed in seeing new things and I think because of that I didn’t think of any of the practical day to day worries you think about at home, which made it a complete getaway. To my mind, experiencing this part of Namibia was as if we had ‘gone foreign’. If we had gotten on a flight and flown to a different country we would not have experienced as big a change as the differences between Namibia north and south of the ‘Red Line’ (to the north of which land and life becomes communal, aka traditional). South of the Red Line was in large part Westernized. For one, we saw white people! We had white sheets and air-conditioning, I was shocked to find zucchini and broccoli at dinner, and the Spar at Otjiwarango was heaven. I couldn’t stop staring at the beautiful things. Real cheese, brie, cream cheese!, meat without bones, a bakery, it was like being in the West. Yes, I know we were in tourist areas but the change was noticeable all the same.

As we drove home and crossed back over the Red Line the sights immediately became more familiar. Colourful in both paint and name, cuca shops appeared. The mopane fences of small farms and goats and donkeys in the road replaced the long stretches of nothing, save the bought wire fences of the commercial farms to the south. The north is dirtier, more crowded, and I think more beautiful. The familiar road from Oshakati to Onambelela was turned blood red from the sun setting behind the makalani palms bordering the quickly diminishing oshanas. We turned into our gate.

Home Sweet Home.

Until we realized we had almost been robbed.

Someone had tried to quietly open the padlock to our living area with an ill fitting key, which had broken off making it impossible to get into our house without breaking the lock with a brick. To make our homecoming even more welcoming, we heard that our whole complex had almost burnt down while we were away. Jacopina, the day she moved out of one of the huts in the complex, had lit the garbage pit and left it burning after she left. The wind had then carried the flames to the dried out grasses, which had burst into flames. Had the wind been in the opposite direction, my hut, the entire DI complex, and a large part of the school’s sports grounds would have been burnt to a crisp. As it was the fire reached to eight feet from our house and a large section of grass and mopane is burnt.

This is the real Namibia. Gotta love it.