Finland in the Dark Continent

A Journey Through Southern Africa

Copyright 1989-1993 by Richard Bollar - All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

Etosha National Park

After an hour or so we departed for Etosha, which was really the final third of the journey. The Etosha National Park encompasses an area the size of New Jersey, with the primary feature being a pan; a lake that many of the seasonal rivers drain into. Thousands of years ago, the pan was the size of Holland, but it's much smaller now. The minerals in the water that evaporated away have completely killed the soil, giving the area a scorched earth look; completely devoid of any life at all, except for along the fringes of the water. The pan is the main feature of Etosha, providing plenty of water for the wildlife there.

There are three campsites in Etosha, and we would be spending two nights in each one. Our destination this afternoon was Okaukuejo, the main camp, located roughly in the center of the park (east to west). The traffic was fairly heavy but the traffic moved quickly. In fact, we made very good time to the Andersson Gate entrance. Another search, the first we had experienced since the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, sealing the guns and ammo, and checking our campsite reservation and we were in.

The camp itself was eighteen kilometers further north, but we went much slower because of all the animals. The place was flush with Burchell's zebra (the black and brown ones) by the side of the road. They were all very fat, and it was obvious that the rains had helped all the animals prepare for the summer months.

We took several detours along the way to check out some of the watering holes, but the timing just wasn't right to catch the animals there or to take good pictures so we entered the camp. Once again, Pat checked us in while we wandered around. Check in was quick, so all I noticed was a warning about an anthrax epidemic throughout the park....

Anthrax is a bacteria that affects warm-blooded mammals like cows and sheep (and zebra and springbok and man), and is generally a result of poor hygiene; i.e. when an infected animal defecates into a watering hole, other animals drinking from it are likely to become infected. There are varying schools of thought about the treatment of anthrax, but the prevailing one is to simply ignore it as it keeps the herd sizes in the park to a manageable level. The alternative would be to treat the water with a chemical which might kill the bacteria, a solution which seems to have more downside than up, with the risk of really screwing up the ecosystem.

What's really quite interesting about anthrax, though, is that it doesn't affect carnivores like the cats. So, what happens is that the lions and cheetah simply wait for a zebra to keel over before they go in for a snack.

When I decided to go on this trip, I had expected the facilities at the safari camps to be very primitive. Nothing, really, could be further from the case. Okaukuejo had bungalows, pre-pitched army-style tents and camp grounds, a restaurant, a souvenir shop, a general store (with woeurs, though frozen ones), swimming pool, and a museum. The grounds-keeping was very attractive, and trees and well-tended grass filled the camp, attracting the native birds.

The highlight, though, was a watering hole that butted up against the edge of the camp. It was floodlit, and filled with animals around the clock. You could sit on a park bench a discrete distance from the hole itself and watch the animals take turns to water.

The tourists that I had wanted so to avoid were conveniently placed on the other side of the camp from our pre-pitched tents. We didn't see a one while in the camp; I guess they were in their air conditioned rooms watching TV or something.

Though it was off-season, the park was really fairly crowded. For the first time since we began the trip, we had to share the grill that evening, and I began to liken this place to Yellowstone. We were very far away from the standard distribution channels, though, and we were eating canned goods and frozen woeurs almost exclusively. Strange, but I wasn't getting tired of the woeurs. I love almost any sausage, but most of them are so fatty that they make me ill if I have more than one. These woeurs, no matter where we bought them, all tasted great and didn't make me ill. So, I guess that it is possible to make sausages from lean meats. I just wish I could find something like it here.

We stayed up and watched the watering hole and saw a terrific variety of game. There were the obligatory zebras and antelope, but we also saw about twenty elephant, a similar number of giraffe and some kudu. We finally went to bed, a little too late for how early we needed to be up in the morning.

Right as I was falling asleep, Pat told me that I needed to spend time reading tomorrow, because he had finished his book, and wanted to spend time reading my book tomorrow. Oh, okay.

I drifted off to sleep to the sounds of animals snorting....

It seemed like only an hour or two had passed before Pat was waking me up. God, it couldn't possibly be time to get up yet. No, no, it's not time to get up yet, but there's a black rhino at the watering hole. How does this guy know these things? There was no use grabbing the camera, because even in low light, I would need a flash large enough to incinerate the poor animal. I cursed the fact that I didn't bring any high-speed film.

Getting to the hole, I noticed that high-speed really wouldn't have been enough. I would have needed infrared film to get this one. She was drinking in the shadows of the high grass, and you really couldn't see her. Pat must have heard her bellow a call to clear the hole. There were absolutely no other animals there. Well, as exciting as it was to see one of the last black rhinos in the world, I went back to sleep.

Ah, it's amazing what an extra hour will do for you! When Pat woke me up on Friday, May 12 at 0515, I was actually feeling pretty good about things. The coffee tasted great, the rusks were superb, I had enough film to sink a ship, and it looked like it was going to be a good day. Knowing that it would be quite hot sitting by the watering holes, I wore a T shirt and shorts, and brought along a sweatshirt for the very early hour.

It was all a bit exciting, because really this was the whole reason for the trip. Everything else was just screwing around, and getting us ready for this. You could even see the difference in the Land Rover; everything non-essential for day trips had been removed, and camera mounts had been affixed to the windows. In the back, a sturdy Slik tripod steadied with sandbags looked ready to handle the biggest camera made.

It was important for us to be first out of the gate so that we could have our choice of parking places wherever we chose to stop. Park rules forbid leaving your vehicle once out of the fenced-in camp, and with good reason! People frighten the animals, while vehicles don't. Frightened animals are a problem, because they are unpredictable; they're as like to charge you as run away from you, and in a competition between a zebra and a man, the man is likely to become road pizza.

There was another reason. The government was trying to prevent poaching, and the most effective way they had found was to keep people on the marked tracks and in their vehicles. Pat said that the South African Defense Force performed maneuvers in the park (plausible as we were only a hundred kilometers from Angola) and shot people not in vehicles on sight. I had a hard time believing that, but appreciated his point: I wouldn't get out of the car.

By 0600, we had the Land Rover waiting at the gate for opening at sunrise, and were sitting on the hood to wait for one of the rangers to open the gate. I noticed that the tour busses weren't even warmed up yet. I'm sure the wake-up call for the tourists would be about 0700, with a departure at 0800. They would probably show up at our watering hole around 0900, right as we would be finishing up with our morning shoot. All in all it seemed like an extraordinarily fair system. We suffer and get up early to get first dibs on the spots, and they take the shift when the sun is the highest. It seemed only fair since the tinted glass in their air conditioned bus would wash out the color anyway.

As a small crescent of sun peered over the horizon to the northeast, the entire line of vehicles, almost entirely Land Rovers or Volkswagen Golfs started up their engines. It was just like being at Indy! We were waiting for the green flag....

It seemed appropriate that the ranger would have a green uniform. He opened the gate, and we roared off. After a few kilometers, there was a fork in the road, and we chose the fork other than that selected by the lead vehicle. After another twenty minutes or so we crested a hill and saw at least four hundred zebra heading in the same direction that we were.

Now, all of us have seen zebra before. Hell, when I lived in Washington behind the National Zoo, I saw them at least once a week. I had never seen so many before! They were as plentiful as cows in Wisconsin. We stopped briefly to get a picture of them grazing, but shortly continued on to the water hole.

Despite our stop, we were still the first to arrive, and we chose a location that gave a good view from both sides of the Land Rover. No animals other than some birds were there and the water was glass-calm. Pat and I sat back and drank our coffee while we waited. John and Pam cleaned their cameras; a pair of Nikon F-3's, and prepared their 2000 millimeter lenses for the distant shots. These lenses were huge, and looked like bazooka barrels. I sat there with my 300 millimeter lens and wondered if I would be able to shoot anything. It seemed that anything in my range would show up as nostril hair in John's viewfinder.

We waited only twenty minutes or so before the first zebra stuck a nose out from behind a bush to take a look at the hole. Seeing it empty, he walked to the edge and started drinking. His ears pricked as we started taking pictures but he didn't run. Pat looked at my camera and asked if it would always be so loud. "Hey, it's auto focus and auto wind," I said a little testily, "So no, it's not going to get any quieter."

My noise apparently didn't make a difference because shortly about a hundred zebra came through the brush and started drinking. Some stayed on the edge, but others walked into the pool up to knee level and drank from there. The water stayed calm, so the zebras' reflections could be seen clearly. There were many opportunities to take some stunning pictures before the zebra heard a noise and galloped off, leaving the water a frothy mess.

With such a start from the zebra, I was expecting to see another group of animals show up, but we were left alone for another hour. We decided to try one more place before heading back to camp, but that, too was empty, so we headed back to camp, seeing a few springbok and gemsbok in the distance.

It was only 1000 when we returned, but it was very hot outside already. We were careful to park the Land Rover under a tree so that we wouldn't fry when we went out for our afternoon drive. After having some bacon and eggs for our brunch, we decided to go to the pool.

The pool was populated by a very nice collection of attractive women, and Pat the shark, dressed in a Speedo bathing suit and a smile when over to chat them up. Wearing a day glow pink boxer shorts style bathing suit myself, I figured that I'd wait to cull through his rejects, I sat in the water and set about finishing the book so that I could give it to Pat later on....

Well, there wound up not being any rejects... Pat had the women charmed, and I didn't see him again until 1500. Pam and I enjoyed the pool, though and I made some significant progress on the book, and even enjoyed a nice swim.

We packed up for our afternoon trip and were out the gate again by 1530. The dry heat was very comfortable, and made drying off from the pool a no-brainer. John had spent the break cleaning off his cameras. I blew on the lens of my camera and that seemed to disgust John so much that he took the camera from me to clean it. Because animals were rarely out in the heat, we decided to head into a stand of trees called the Haunted Forest, so named because the trees (which are indigenous only to Namibia) are usually found only in the mountainous area to the south. We were in search of dik-dik, a small antelope who was known to hide in the trees.

On the drive, we saw many other animals, including guinea fowl, ostriches and springbok, and we stopped to get pictures if they were close enough. Entering the forest, it got much cooler and we slowed so that we might be able to find the skittish dik-dik. We found the dung mounds that marked off their territory and decided to wait nearby. We didn't have to wait long; one shot across the road before any of us had a chance to even lift our cameras. This game was obviously going to be difficult to shoot!

Continuing to drive slowly through the forest, we got small glimpses of the dik-dik running away. Really, these guys were everywhere, but they just playing with us. Finally, one appeared just off to my left and I was able to squeeze off a few shots with the power-winder before it got out of sight. We had a thoroughly great afternoon, but had to head back to the camp before sunset, as that was when the gates were closed on us. We were so pleased with the afternoon that we popped open a beer. It was the first of the day as the professionals were actually 'working.' We were really in a very good mood!

The drive back was uneventful, but we saw a recently dead zebra by the side of the road, only a kilometer away from the camp. It appeared to be healthy (aside from being dead) so we suspected that it had died from anthrax. We made a note to come by first thing in morning and hopefully catch some of the carnivores having a little breakfast.

Back at the camp, we hurried over to the water hole to see what would show up at sunset. We had a good collection today! Plenty of elephant, including several little ones, only three feet high or so along with some giraffe. We watched them for a couple of hours before preparing dinner.

I took a shower while Pam did the work tonight. I was getting used to the water being hot, and was not surprised when the quality of the water was very good. What did surprise me was how dirty I was. Red water flowed off me and pooled on the white tile at my feet before going down the drain. I scrubbed for several minutes before the water went clear again (of course, it didn't help that the water was hard).

While looking at my beard, which was filling out nicely aside from a bald spot right under my chin, I started thinking about work. It had been two weeks away already, and I had never been away for so long before. I was starting to feel like it was time to get back. Which reminded me that my flight left Johannesburg on May 18, a day before the Talbot's flight....

John knew about my flight as he had made his reservations at the same time that I had, but I needed to remind him. It was a surprise to Pat, but it didn't seem to be a big deal. We'd just leave for Windhoek on the seventeenth, and I could catch a connecting flight to Johannesburg on the eighteenth for my flight to Nairobi leaving at 1030.

I was happy that everyone was being so amenable and relaxed again. Our larder was starting to run a little low, so we had eggs with chili sauce and pan-fried potatoes for dinner. After dinner, we all retired to our books, while John went to do a major clean-up. I finished my book and tossed it over to Pat right as the lion's roar started.

We ran to the watering hole, and could hear the roaring, but couldn't see anything. We waited for an hour to see if the lion might show up, but no luck, and we went back to the tent.

The last thing I needed was a little excitement, and I did not sleep well at all, being stirred by just about any noise at all. Even Pat's snoring was bothering me. It would be predictable that I would fall to sleep right as it was time to get up on Saturday, May 13. No matter. I didn't seem to be tired at all; I guess I finally shook off the jet lag which had made me sleep much more than I was accustomed to.

I made the coffee and we were the first ones at the gate, anxious to get a look at that zebra. I got a little anxious as the ranger showed up later than he should, but must of the sun was still below the horizon when we got out. We came up on the zebra almost immediately, but there wasn't much left; only a skeleton and a portion of the pelt. Whatever was out last night pretty much finished it off.

That out of the way, we went to another watering hole and came across a plethora of animals. Not only did we see zebra and giraffe, but we also saw springbok, gemsbok, kudu and water buffalo, all at the water hole at the same time. What was even more amazing was that we were the only ones there, so we didn't have to share the view.

Suddenly all the animals bolted, making an extraordinarily loud noise as they ran away from the pool. Presently, a warthog with two young came from the other side, and moved up to the water to drink. It was apparent that one wouldn't want to mess with a mean looking sucker like this. John said that the only animal that would mess with a warthog was the honey badger. The honey badger was a mean character, not only very aggressive, but also with a unique attack strategy; he always goes for the opponent's privates. I wasn't looking forward to meeting up with one of those!

We got bored of the boars, and used our remaining hour of good light just driving through the plain. We saw over a thousand springbok grazing; their young 'pronking,' and we stayed for well over an hour before returning to camp.

We had originally intended to head to Halali that afternoon, but because of scattered reports of lion, we decided to stay another day. Being able to put off leaving was good, and I devoured a ham sandwich and roasted in the sun, enjoying the hot winds while reading 'The Second Deadly Sin,' the book Pat had given me. The heat made me consume a fair number of beers, and I was feeling a little light headed when we went off for the afternoon....

This afternoon's goal was to find some of the birds that live in the park, particularly spoonbills. We didn't have a particular destination, but were scanning for nests and would stop once we saw one. I had no eye for that, and soon gave up. John was spotting stuff what looked like a speck to me, so I left the bird watching to him.

We did find some of the red breasted spoonbills, and they were very good about letting us get their picture; and they were even close enough that I could get some tight head shots. John and Pat were feeling very good about the pictures they had taken, making orgasmic sounds each time they caught a good shot.

Further on our drive, we came across some prairie dogs. These guys were really cute, and they were attracted to the sounds of our cameras. They looked like they were about to crawl onto the Land Rover, which might have made for an interesting picture. We blew much too much film on the little guys, but they were really fun to see, and it's not good to tell a willing subject to go kiss off. Might cause bad vibes later on.

The remainder of our afternoon drive was fairly uneventful (ah, we're becoming so blasé), seeing only zebra and springbok on our drive back to camp. This being our last night in Okaukuejo, we did the requisite souvenir shopping at the store, and got some new woeurs and onions. I was having problems finding T shirts large enough, they only had small and medium, so I had to go without.

Dinner was early and we ate at the restaurant. They were serving draft Windhoek beer, and it tasted very different from the canned stuff. Then again, it was very cold, and sometimes that makes all the difference. The bug zapper provided a bit of entertainment as appropriately giant sized bugs got fried. So, too, did the stories from people sitting next to us who had arrived from Namutoni just today.

After dinner we did a lot of the pre-pack stuff before settling down to watch the watering hole. Because we still held hopes for seeing a lion before we left Okaukuejo, we would try one more time in this part of the park tomorrow, and then head for Halali in the afternoon.

I did the lunch dishes, which Pam pointed out I hadn't done enough of (which was embarrassingly true) and took a shower, continuing to enjoy the water. The beard was really starting to itch, so I shaved off the neck part, and looked much less scruffy all of a sudden.

I looked up and saw a pair of yellow eyes staring at me. It scared the bejeezus out of me and I was almost out of the bathroom altogether when I realized that it was a house cat looking at me. Exactly what was a cat doing here, I wonder.

I finished up my bathing out of the shower and took one last walk around before going to bed. For the first time, I noticed that the bed covers I was using had the seal of the South West African army. Ah, the magic of army surplus. Drifting off to sleep proved easy, and neither the lions roar nor Pat's snore disturbed me....

Our last day in Okaukuejo was Sunday, May 14. We were well into our routine of early rising, and once again were first in line to get out. We received advice the night before that a cheetah was sighted at one of the far watering holes to the northwest. We drove directly there, not stopping for any distractions along the way, hoping to catch the cat.

It seemed that everyone had heard the same story that we had, and they were all right behind us on the drive. No one passed us, and we arrived at the watering hole first and got a fairly decent spot. About a dozen other vehicles were right behind us and all got parking places of varying quality.

For the first hour or so, there wasn't much activity at all, only a vulture kept us entertained by strutting on a tree trunk and spreading his wings. I suspected that the crowd was scaring everything away, but kept my mouth shut. We were there so long that the tourist busses showed up. Hell, we had quite a party going on, but there wasn't anything to do.

Finally two zebra showed up at the hole. That peaked everyone's interest, and I could hear the cameras snapping. I looked up to see that the tourists weren't looking at the zebra, rather they were looking on the other side of us. I turned around slowly and saw the cheetah pressed flat against the ground, looking more like a run than the real thing, surveying the zebra.

"Uh, Pat... Turn around slowly and look at the ground." Pat saw the cheetah and just about dropped a load in his pants. It was so close! He and John were both able to get some pretty decent pictures before the zebra and the cheetah ran off. I was on the wrong side, so I didn't get much of a picture at all. Bummer.

We were successful on our quest, and even though the light was wrong, we were in good spirits on the way back to the camp. We had some potato chips and beer for brunch as we packed up the trailer and set on our leisurely way off to Halali. Almost immediately out of the camp, we threw another stone onto our rear window, and made it even closer to falling out. John worked on the window as we headed east.

Along the way, we skirted the Etosha pan itself. It was the first time that we had seen it, and I was very impressed with how desolate it was. Literally as far as I could see for an arc of over 150 degrees was a complete, barren, sterile bleached, white color. There was not so much as a blade of grass on it, but right at the periphery which separated the 'land' from the pan the bank was muddy, and we saw wildebeest and springbok mucking around in it.

We drove slowly, taking in the scenery, but not really taking any pictures. We took a side road which placed us into the pan, intensifying the desolate feeling. From this road, we saw a dust devil and some ostrich running across the pan, but they were too far away for me to photograph.

The scenery was completely unlike anything I had ever seen, and I was lost in it when Pam called from the back, "Guys, I've gotta go to the bathroom." Now? Now....

Have you ever had a really bad feeling that something horrible was going to happen? In order to tend to Pam's needs, we stopped as soon as we were in a spot where no animals could be seen. We figured, somewhat naively, I guess, that if there weren't any animals around, we couldn't possibly be accused of poaching.

So, in the middle of the pan with nothing more than the horizon visible in each direction, we got out of the Land Rover to take our potty break. In reality, it should have been a quick in-and-out kind of venture, but one of the four of us was having a little, uh, trouble. Apparently the kind of trouble that you can't just pack up and leave until later.

I felt terribly exposed sitting on the hood of the Land Rover and wished that we could hurry up and get back underway. But, from the sounds coming from the back, it seemed that we might be around for a bit longer. I watched a hawk circle high above, finally landing about a stone's throw away.

It seemed ominous that a bird-of-prey would drop by to visit, but at least it wasn't a vulture. Our toilet excuse might not work any longer. However, at that point, two zebra appeared from behind us. Strange, but they didn't seem to be afraid, and kept walking towards us. Gee, what else could possibly happen to us?

Someday, I'll have to learn to stop asking that question; as a government Land Rover stopped besides us. Oh, just great! Gee, do you think they might have wondered what we were doing? Nope, they just wanted to say "Hi!" to Pat and wondered if he had gotten any good photographs lately. As Pat waved good-bye to the rangers, the straining sounds from the back ended, and the Talbots returned to join us on the hood. The business being done, we continued on our drive to Halali, reaching the camp an hour before sunset. Two United Nations vans guarded the sole entrance to the camp. {rhino story}

Like everything else in Namibia, Halali was a remnant of the German occupation; a hunting lodge for the soldiers, true to the most exacting German detail, including the appropriate game trophies festooning the walls. While Pat checked in, we debated the pronunciation of 'Halali.' Was it 'haLAlee', which would seem to be appropriate for an African name, or was it 'halaLEE', which might sound like a hunting horn kind of sound. You know, like the song; 'halaLEE, halaLA'.

We were somewhat discouraged by the lack of animals as we approached Halali, and reports from the guests didn't do much to cheer us; there just wasn't anything around. We decided to head to Namutoni the next day and just stay in Halali for the night. For one night, it didn't seem worth pitching the tents, so we stayed in the government issue ones again.

The main feature of this camp was a small dolomite hill (about one hundred meters high) in the middle. We clambered up it, through a stand of mopani trees and watched the sunset over the pan. As the sun reached the horizon, it seemed to get so very large as it turned a dark red. The heat rising off the pan make it seem to shimmer and waver right before it blinked out. Though darkness set in immediately, the orange glow could still be seen off to the west for another hour....

Actually, I was glad that we had decided to leave Halali, as there wasn't a whole lot to do. There wasn't a watering hole nearby, so you couldn't watch the animals socialize, and even the bar was kind of boring. We went to have a couple of pops, but the place was empty and even the bartender had nothing witty to say.

We finally just decided to say 'screw it' to Halali and we went off to bed early to read. This place was so beat, that we heard no animal noises through the night.

Monday, May 15 didn't start off so well. Pam was still not feeling well, and we overslept, waking right as the gate was opening. You know that things aren't going to turn out well great you rush, but I hoped we would be spared. Not a chance.

First off, we went to a watering hole which was very crowded, and settled for one of the only places left. It wasn't good, but about half of the water could be seen. No animals were there so we waited. Presently a tour bus pulled up and blocked us in, removing what was left of our view of the water. Well, there are worse things in the world than being caught at a watering hole without animals.

It was quite unfortunate that I had to discover exactly what that could be. Poor Pam was suffering from some sort of intestinal upset, and right as I realized that we were at a morale ebb, her flatulence started. It was a powerful gas that permeated the vehicle, making us all smell like, uh, well, you know. And it wouldn't stop. Pam was miserable, not being able to control it, and the rest of us were miserable having to breathe it.

Pat and I were trying to be nice about the whole thing, so we pretended to ignore it by sticking our heads our the windows to take pictures. We must have looked so silly taking pictures of nothing! Finally, it just became so bad that I had to laugh. Oh, we all laughed so hard, we probably scared the remaining animals away.

The laugh seemed to do us all good, and even when we finally kicked up another rock and destroyed the rear glass, allowing the road dust to settle faster, as we entered the gate to Namutoni we just had to be more amused.

Namutoni was an oasis and we were the Bedouin who needed to drink from whatever it could offer. We felt our spirits rise as we walked through the compound. The grass and trees were bright green, and filled with birds and the fortress of Namutoni stood behind the palm trees in white-washed splendor.

Namutoni was a German police post established in 1901 to control the spread of rinderpest (amazingly this is in my dictionary: an acute infectious disease of cattle and, often, sheep and goats, characterized by fever and inflammation of the mucous membrane of the intestines; cattle plague). The original fort was destroyed in 1904 in a battle between the Germans and the Ovambo, and it was replaced by the gleaming white fort which stands today. In 1957, the fort was declared a national monument, and it now represents the most popular of the tourist camps in Etosha. {Insert Camel Story}

While the sun was high, we pitched our tents and ate Spam sandwiches, waiting for time to go back out. We all felt better, and even Pam looked healthy. I was still afraid that she might have a relapse, though and start producing methane in larger quantities....

Soon enough, it was time to go, and we headed out the gate in search of some big game. Cameras at the ready, like elephant guns in days since past, we scanned ahead in search of our prey.

In an event which seemed to bode well for our party, we found a trail of elephant droppings on the road. Hopefully they were heading in our direction. In another few kilometers we found the elephant at a watering hole that was being fed by a windmill.

The elephant (about fifteen) were all crowded around the nozzle leading from the mill, and taking turns sucking the water directly from it; it was like they knew that drinking the water from the pond wasn't a very good idea. The elephant were very entertaining, and it was at least an hour before we noticed the infant elephant between his mother's legs. He was so small! Every time he would try to escape, she would pull him back with her trunk, much to his apparent frustration. I want to avoid describing it as 'cute,' but it really was adorable.

Finally the elephant had enough and trampled a fresh path through the brush. We couldn't follow them, of course, so we stayed and got some very nice pictures of the on-going cycle of fauna drinking in the late afternoon sun.

On the drive back to Namutoni, I mused over how jaded I had become; in the past few days I had surely seen several thousand zebra, but now, I hardly gave them a second look. Aside from the dik-dik and the cats, I had seen at least several of all the major things in the park. It was strange that I hadn't seen any lion, though as there are supposed to be over six hundred in the park.

Once again, we returned to camp right before sunset, having had a thoroughly great afternoon to counter the perfectly crappy morning. We took the cameras over to the fort, and climbed up into a parapet to watch the sunset. It was very crowded with tourists, and I felt a little grungy, so I went back downstairs to watch it from ground level.

At this point, Pat was the only one who could figure out anything to make from the odd items we had left in the pantry, so I left him to that while I went to take a shower. I had come to expect hot water and lots of pressure, and I wasn't disappointed (strange to think of having plenty of water in such an arid climate). The water was even soft enough to suds up the water a little.

I got out of the shower to look at myself in the mirror. I was as tan as I would ever be, from the days sitting out in the hot sun, and my beard had turned out to be more blond than gray (aside from the weird bald spot under the chin). Hey, I didn't look too bad and I didn't look as though I gained any weight either (expecting to lose weight while pounding down as many beers as we had would be the big fantasy). Africa had been good to me, but maybe it was becoming time to return home....

Yeah, I would have to go home soon, but in the meantime I did have one more full day of safari. I'd definitely have to make the most of it. Returning to the camp, I found Pat playing the role of the mad chemist; concocting some kind of stew from the remaining cans. It actually tasted pretty good, and when accompanied by the last of the chocolate pudding, almost enjoyable. Of course I had my fingers crossed to hopefully prevent me from getting some kind of horrible disease....

After dinner, we wandered around to see what was going on, and we met up with the newlywed photographers from Sossusvlei. They had been following around in our footprints and had seen many of the same places that we had (they had missed the Hansa brewery bar, though). It was fun seeing them again, and we may have stayed up a little late and had a little much to drink with them. Oh well. This was a vacation, you know.

I stumbled back to the tent and slept the sleep of the dead.

Waking up on Tuesday, May 16 wasn't as bad as it should have been. I didn't even feel like warmed over crap. What a deal! I went to get some water for coffee and found the rest of the party standing over an empty onion sack. Overnight, something had eaten all of our onions! There was a mess of onion skins spread all over the campsite, so it was obvious that they weren't stolen. Whew, something had bad breath this morning, I bet!

We got a good position to get out of the gate, and acting on a hot tip, we headed for a spot where there was supposed to have been a recent kill. We were the first there, and there it was! A springbok had fallen earlier in the day. The rangers said that a cheetah caught it, but it was chased off by hyenas. The hyenas were done, and now the jackals were having a go.

We got a number of appropriate pictures of the jackals doing pretty gross stuff, but some of it was kind of funny in a macabre sort of way. At one point, one of the jackals had the springbok's head stuck on top of his own, and he ran around in circles trying to throw it off. Yeah, okay, so it's gross. I won't even mention when they sucked the eyeballs out.

Finally, the jackals tired or simply got stuffed and left. The birds were right behind though. I finally understood how the zebra from last week could be gone just overnight. It's a very efficient system.

We started seeing giant termite mounds, and on occasion, there were small mammals working on something around the mounds. They might have been anteaters of some sort, I guess. I didn't believe that these mounds actually existed until I saw them. The only time I had ever seen them was in the Uncle Scrooge comic where he was competing with Flintheart Glomgold for world's richest duck. The competition comes down to who has saved the biggest ball of string, both of which are unwound right through the heart of Africa. Scrooge loses almost all of his ball to one of these termite mounds.

We also saw more gemsboks wandering around in small groups of three or so and the ubiquitous zebra and springbok. Really, everything was overshadowed by our excitement over the dead springbok. Heading back to camp, I realized that if I was planning to leave for Johannesburg tomorrow, I needed to get a ticket....

Okay, just how naive do you think I am? Yeah, it's true that I didn't expect to have any problems in getting a ticket, so I was a touch surprised to find that all of the flights between Windhoek and Johannesburg were sold-out for the next day, Wednesday, May 17. As I mentioned earlier, the first flight out on Thursday, May 18 had space available, but its arrival was half an hour after my scheduled departure. {Did I mention this earlier?}

The South African Airways reservations clerk in Windhoek was very sympathetic, but really, she said that there was nothing she could do for me. Unsure of what to do, I rang off, and went to speak to Pat, who was in the process of making lunch. I traded duties with Pat, and while I figured out how to make a lunch, he gave SAA a call.

Should I have been surprised? He was successful in getting me a seat on the last flight out on Wednesday. How, exactly did Pat succeed? He said that he offered to bring a box of chocolates to the woman. What a charmer! It's good that he figured out how to get me on the plane - I was having nightmares about how to travel the 1,300 kilometers on dirt roads back to Johannesburg in the thirty-nine hours left in southern Africa. That would have been a fun high-speed event worthy of a rally story of its own, I'm sure.

That bit of tension out of the way, our afternoon safari was fun and relaxing, but fully uneventful. We saw only zebra and giraffe at the water holes, and got some decent video tape of some people walking around outside of their car. Had we not been guilty of the same thing ourselves earlier on in the trip, we might have taken the tape to the rangers.

Since it was our last night in the park, we stayed out longer than usual, and returned to the camp as the gates were being locked. After only a short speech from the guard, we were allowed back in. I set to my task of packing most of my possessions away, while Pam and Pat made dinner.

It seemed only appropriate that out final meal would be woeurs cooked on the braai with some fresh chili relish and some baked beans. We ate quietly in the flame of our fire, and watched the stars. I knew it would be my last look at the clear sky of the southern hemisphere for a long time.

Returning to Earth, we saw a pair of big yellow eyes staring at us from a good twenty feet away, barely visible in the dying flame of our fire. I wasn't sure that I wanted to get a better look at the creature behind those eyes, but before I could comment, Pat threw a chunk of cheese towards the animal. The cheese drew out a jackal! Pat threw more chunks of cheese and the jackal kept coming closer. I fumbled around for my camera and flash, and managed to nail our buddy Jackie the jackal right before he ran off.

I guess it was a shame that we didn't stay up and party into the night, but it really didn't seem appropriate as we had an incredibly busy day ahead. I lay in bed, wondering what had happened in the rest of the world during my near three weeks of being a drop out....

I really should have been paying more careful attention to Pat when he laid out our itinerary. Waking up, I found that no preparations to leave had been made; in fact, it seemed that everyone was treating today like a normal day. John was cleaning his cameras, Pam was showering, and Pat was God-knows-where.

Leaving for Windhoek in the morning was apparently not the plan - we had one last outing into the pan, and got a good start out the gate. We'd covered no more than a couple of kilometers before we saw a lion next to a stand of trees. It was just sitting there, preening itself just like a house cat would. We got closer to take some pictures (though still much too far away for me) and blew a few rolls each before the lion got bored with us and disappeared into the trees.

Amazingly, we had blown three hours with the cat, and it was time to head back to Namutoni and break camp. Even so, having returned to camp, I didn't notice anyone making any significant progress on getting ready to go. Pat had me rewiring the electrical light harness for the trailer, and everyone else was lounging around. I hadn't really been paying attention to the maps for several days now, and even so, seeing Windhoek only one fold away on the map really didn't mean anything to me; it might just be a quick little drive away.