Honey badger don't care

We just finished a full week in Etosha National Park. It feels like a long time since we’ve been in a town! We’re now in Windhoek, at a hotel. Tonight will be the third time in a month we’ve slept indoors. Fortunately, we were able to enjoy G&T on the terrace overlooking the city as the sun went down.

Etosha. There were many highlights. We saw far more wildlife there than we have in previous visits – even more than we did later in the season last year. Some of the highlights:

·      Many Damara dikdiks, Africa’s smallest antelope, weighing in at less than 5 kg. They are about the size of bunnies with really long skinny legs.

·      A leopard, briefly. But now we believe they really exist.

·      Herd of white elephants. Fortunately, not in the room. They were white because they had been rolling around in white, powder-like clay to cool down. Then they crossed the road directly between the two vehicles stopped ahead of us.

·      Several (dozen) Germans. Namibia seems to be the cheap exotic vacation of choice for German pensioners.

·      Amazing starry nights.

·      Many black rhinos. Hard to imagine that people will shoot them just because something things that horn will make them more potent.

·      Impala chasing jackals, just for the hell of it.

·      Jackals taunting at a tortoise, but giving up because the tortoise kept plodding along toward the water and ignoring the jackals.

·      Adolescent giraffe who seemed to be going through a phase. He was pestering all the other giraffes and trying to start something. Repeatedly. We saw this over several days.

·      Baby elephants stampeding toward a water hole, stumbling over their feet in their excitement to get to water. Also getting stuck while trying to walk over a large rock. Baby elephants rock.

·      B staring down a honey badger. We had one that insisted on coming into camp, brazenly approaching the dinner I was making. Sadly, no pictures because we were too concerned with trying to get it out of the way before it sprayed us. B kept shining lights in its eyes and trying to shoo it, but honey badger didn’t care.

·      The best of many campsite plagues. In Sesriem, it was grasshoppers. In Okaukuejo (our first camp in Etosha Park), it was jackals looking for snacks. In Halali (our second camp in Etosha), it was the honey badger. In Namutoni, the prettiest of all Etosha camps, it was banded mongoose. Lots of them. They would come in huge packs several times a day, squeaking and digging for bugs in the sand.

So in the end, we succeeding in finding hot, dry, sunshine. The torrential rains, which we have heard may have been a freak cyclone passing through, seem long ago and far away. Still love Botswana. Still love Namibia.

Bushlore came to pick up our truck this afternoon. As always, it was sad to see it go. We had a much better setup than in previous trips, so we camped at every opportunity and preferred it to the few nights we needed to be in inns in towns. Bushlore has been good to us. They’re even picking us up and driving us to the airport in the morning. (We’re hoping it will be in our camping truck!)

(Sorry for the lack of pics - to come later.)