Namibia

Oryx/Gemsbok and a Springbok, Etosha NP
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Next stop was Windhoek, Namibia, our second to last country on the trans.  We spent a short few hours in the city as we were all eager to be on our way to Etosha. Windhoek was a great city, clean, friendly, well laid out and full of the things we are used to in our other lives.  It also suddenly seemed expensive!

Etosha National Park was great!  We didnt get to see a lot of predators, but we did see hundreds of zebra, giraffe, gemsbok (Oryx), springbok and impala.  At the waterholes there would be hundreds of animals mixing and drinking.  We did see an African Wild Cat and a lioness with two small cubs.  At the campsites (very nice) there was a waterhole where we sat for hours in the evenings.  Here we saw a lot of elephant, rhino, hyena, giraffe and antelopes of various kinds. We stopped for the night at a Cheetah Park after Etosha.  We played with some "tame" cheetah around the family homestead, and went on a ride through the huge enclosures where the "wild" cheetah were being fed. Similar to the lions at Antelope Park in Zim, but less developed. We briefly looked at some ancient San rock art at two sites on the way to the coast.  One place had engravings, the other paintings.  Then we went to the Cape Cross fur seal colony, it stank!  Amazing watching all the thousands of seals on the beaches, rocks and in the water, but they created a vile whiff. We are now in Swakopmund, on the coast, having been sandboarding and quad biking in the dunes here.  The trip was postponed earlier as there was a sand storm. We also went up in an acrobatic bi-plane and did loops and flew upside down over the Swakopmund desert. Awesome! Only a week or so left until we hit Cape Town now. Its hard to believe sometimes that we started in Morocco, West Africa seems so far away!  And so much warmer!  Southern African winter nights are cold. That came as a shock to some on the truck, but we are on the same latitude approximately (we think from our memory maps!) as south Brazil/north Argentina or maybe Brisbane in Oz. Keep well, and think of us camping in temps close to zero celcius!