Visitors in Africa

The second week of Josh and Amber’s visit was roadtrip time. We drove to Etosha National Park and spent two days viewing the most amazing plethora of wild animals. Because the season was so dry this year with very little rain, it forced all the animals to flock to the waterholes. It was unbelieveable! The first night we stayed at Okekeujo inside the park. We set up camp, made a fire and warmed up tortellini soup we made ahead of time…and S’mores over the hot coals. Then it was off to the waterhole that is situated at the edge of the lodge area. As soon as we arrived there were 3 elephants drinking, several hyenas, giraffes, two rhinos and a male and female lion. We kept waiting for the lions to do something, but they were really lazy!


The next day more of the same, great viewing – animals everywhere! We saw two more lions chilling at a waterhole, a huge lot of elephants (probably 20 or more) and of course plenty of giraffes, zebras, ostrich, oryx, springbok, steenbok, and kudu. We also had a car breakdown – just overheating – but it did force us to illegally get out of the car to figure out what was going on. We checked things over while amber stood as lookout for ferocious lions, even though by now we had already seen that the lions were probably too lazy to go after us anyway. We stayed at Halali the second night, also camping, and the jackals were pacing around outside our tent and knocking over the rubbish bins. But during the night Josh decided to ROAR in his sleep, presumeably to frighten them away…I don’t know if the jackals were freaked out, but it certainly worked on Maveja and I, who both woke up to it.

Day 3 of Etosha was an early morning headed out of the park. We planned to just drive out that day – no game viewing – just to get on the road, but along the way a car coming the opposite direction told us there were more lions at the next waterhole just up ahead, so we decided to check it out. We arrived and parked and were the only car there. The lions (there were 3) saw us pull up and a male and female got up from their napping spots and started heading straight for us. it was amazing. They literally were 5 feet from the car…





And of course, Josh decides to roll down the window!



See the next post for the continuing story of our African roadtrip….