You can stop holding your breath – never fear I am alive and well having not been eaten by a lion or an elephant!
Thursday night seemed to go on forever as I lay awake in bed like a six year old eagerly awaiting Christmas – I think I slept for about two hours as I was so overly excited! After a cup of tea and bowl of muesli and yoghurt I made my way over to the school at 6:30. All of Grade 4 were in their home clothes and had a little bag and a blanket. We packed the cars and by 7:00 we were off. The boys went in the Buggy – an enclosed van with no seats in the back so all the boys sat on the floor. This towed a trailer which had the tents and the sleeping bags in, Festus drove the buggy and Ms Rachel sat with him. Stanley drove the Kombi which all the girls sat in and I sat in the front. This is like a minibus but not as civilised as the ones we know – the seats are more like benches with backs but no seatbelts. We also packed all our food into this.
So we set off to Etosha and went via Outjo to collect the sausage and rolls which were to be for our supper that night. We had a slight problem in that the Kombi every time we stopped such as at a T-junction the whole engine would cut out! This was quite funny but we didn’t think it was a good idea to go Etosha with a crazy van which might land us stranded among lions so Stanley made a quick trip to the garage where they flicked a switch and all was solved! All the children had a chance to go into the big supermarket and spend some of their saved pocket money – laden with sweets and crisps we set off again. While sitting in the Kombi, I got out my camera to take a photo of the girls and to my horror it didn’t turn on – I didn’t understand as I knew it had a full battery as I had charged last night. I opened the battery part and nearly died – I hadn’t taken the battery out of the charger but had put it away in my cupboard in the GAP flat. So no camera to take photos with....I was devastated but still very excited about everything that we would hopefully see.
Etosha is massive so it wasn’t long before we were in “Etosha region” but it was a couple of hours before we reached Okaukuejo. At the main gates of Etosha Park we stopped to give the children their break of jam and bread which was much appreciated. Ms Rachel told me that she had brought a camera so I could have copies of all them – massive sigh of relief! Before we even reached Okaukuejo I saw my first herd of Zebras and springbok. Zebras are really cute and their faces look really cheeky. I’ve decide Otjikondo should definitely get a pet Zebra which I could take for walks in the morning! Our final destination for the day was Halali which was where we were camping, but we stopped at Okaukejo to climb the tower. Okaukejo is one of the places you can stay in Etosha – you can camp there or you can stay in a little apartment and there were a few shops, a restaurant and a couple of pools. I bought some postcards of the animals that I would hopefully be about to see. Then Ms Rachel discovered that she had lost her camera! This so nearly made me cry as the thought of having no photos twice was too much! After a panicked 10 minutes the camera was found and it was handed to me for the rest of the trip....thank you! We then climbed the tower (103 steps) and at the top the view was incredible. You could see for miles and miles in every direction.
We then made our way to Halali – you could drive whichever way you wanted and you saw the animals on the way on the side of the roads or at the water holes. We saw so many animals – it was absolutely breath taking. We saw zebras, giraffes, gemsbok, springbok, ostrich, vultures, secretary birds, jackals, hartebeest and my first two elephants! We were at a watering hole when we saw them – they were so incredible. Even bigger than I expected and so unbelievably beautiful! From then I couldn’t stop grinning which all the children found hilarious and Stanley finally began to believe how much I love elephants. After that I would have been happy not seeing anything else! We sat and watched the elephants that were drinking and splashing the water over themselves and of course I was snapping away on the camera! The only shame was that the learners don’t have a very long attention span so we didn’t stay for nearly as long as I wanted, although, I could have stayed for hours!
At another waterhole where we were watching Springbok and giraffe the Kombi then decided not to start again! This was quite alarming as there signs all over Etosha saying “Do not get out of your car” but Stanley had to get out to try and fix it! After 10 minutes of hitting the fuse box (I think?!) with various things and the car still not starting we both got out our mobiles to ring for some help (don’t actually know who we were hoping to ring?!) but as usual in a crisis there was absolutely no signal! Luckily after some pushing and more hitting the Kombi decided to start to our huge relief!
By now the learners really wanted their lunch and claimed to be dying of thirst – it was incredibly hot but they really know how to complain/whine! We arrived at Halali for a late lunch at about 3:00/3:30. Having lunched on cold fried chicken and macaroni salad everyone was feeling a lot happier. Everyone changed into their swimming gear and we made our way to the swimming pool for a much needed swim! As my bikini bottoms were stolen in Windhoek I was borrowing Chelcie’s swimming costume! I was pretty nervous about the whole activity as we had 33 learners who couldn’t swim and me being put in charge – talk about responsibility! Luckily Stanley had got a swimming badge when he was at Otjikondo, so he assured me everything would be okay! Everyone who knows me knows that I am a very self conscious person so I wasn’t delighted when Ms Rachel told me to check out the pool while they all watched! The learners are all incredibly skinny....so I clambered out of my shorts and a t-shirt and swam two lengths much to the delight of all the learners! Having discovered where the shallow end finished all the learners jumped in with shrieks of delight which made all the European tourists laugh a lot! You could see all their brains whirring trying to work out where I fitted in with 33 children and 3 adults! The learners were incredibly happy and we spent a couple of hours in the pool cooling off with me teaching some of them to swim, giving them piggy backs and generally splashing around! It felt absolutely incredible to be in the water and to be properly cool for once! Stanley and I had two races (I won both!) which illustrated to both of us how unfit we were! One of the tourists asked me why we didn’t let them out of the shallow end and when I said that none of them could swim she suggested that I tow them round the deep end. I didn’t feel this was such a fool proof idea!
When we got out of the pool two German tourists told Stanley and me that they had an alligator in their car! They had been driving along and seen it in front of their car and then as they had carried on driving it had got into the bonnet! I didn’t believe them so they told me to look....I screamed as I saw this massive lizard thing, about 2 metres long, wrapped around inside the bonnet! They all found this incredibly funny. It wasn’t an alligator (they didn’t know the English word) but I think it was an iguana! They were trying to get it out of the bonnet and they had these massive pincer things which they were trying to grab this creature with! They persuaded me to look again and as I looked over the bonnet it poked its tongue upwards which scared the living daylights out of me as it was almost a metre long! They managed to get it out of the bonnet and it shot up into a tree which I was then taking photos of. One of the German tourists came up behind me and sort of picked me up and carried me towards the creature – more screams! I was then rather worried as we were camping very nearby and I really didn’t want to share a tent with this thing!
The children then all showered and started to pitch the tents and we had the difficult job of working out where everyone would sleep. There were 6 tents and 21 sleeping bags - the plan was that Stanley and Festus would sleep in the cars and that Ms Rachel and I would share a tent, however, we worked out that this would mean that the girls would have to sleep with 8 in a tent and the tents aren’t that big. There was also the added complication of the fact that some of the children still wet the bed. They had brought their own duvets to use but we didn’t want to separate the bed wetters: 4 boys and 6 girls! I ended up sharing a tent with 5 girls in which we all slept head to toe! It was pretty cramped and the floor was very solid! After we had cooked supper of sausages and a roll with left over macaroni salad and I had told them all “Beauty and the Beast” and “Cinderella” we made our way up to the water hole. This was 5 minutes walk away and by now it was dark. We passed a sign informing us that “Tourists visit this waterhole at their own risk”! Luckily I had brought a torch as no one else had!
There was a wooden structure above the water hole where you could sit and watch the animals sitting on rocks or wooden benches. When we got there, there were five rhinos which were incredible – so powerful and quite scary looking! We watched them for ages until some of the children started to fall asleep. It was very mesmerizing as you had to watch in silence and it was dark apart from some lights lighting the water hole. We took the children back to the campsite and they all went to bed. I told the girls to leave me a space to sleep and Festus, Stanley and I went back up to the waterhole to wait for lions. The rhinos had gone but we sat and just talked quietly. After an hour and a half we decided to go to bed as nothing had come and we were exhausted but Festus set his alarm for 2:00 (when the lions were predicted to come) and he was going to wake up Stanley who would wake me up. Despite being sooo tired I didn’t really sleep – too much excitement! But at about 1:30 I managed to sleep thinking I would manage a quick cat nap but woke up at 4am! Festus had decided not to wake us up and had gone back to sleep himself! I tried to go back to sleep but didn’t manage it – I had forgotten to bring a pillow so I was using my rucksack with my fleece on top as a pillow. When I looked down I saw Audrey’s hand on top of the fleece – she had obviously thought it was soft and then I had been using it as a pillow! Later I also discovered a Bible underneath the fleece so I had a pretty weird pillow! The learners woke up at 5 and then didn’t want to sleep anymore and by then I was quite cold and ready not to have someone’s feet in my face! Lavinia was also sick this morning at about 5 and then a few more times later – apparently she gets ill every class trip from nerves combined with excitement. Luckily she felt better over the morning and by the time we headed home she was fine.
At 6:00 we went back up to the waterhole where there were Giraffes drinking which were so beautiful and we watched them for about an hour. After breakfast of bread and jam and packing up the tents we left to try and find some lions! We took some photos at the gate to Halali next to the giant elephant’s skull! We then spent an hour or two driving and not really seeing anything and then we decided to head back to Okaukejo, on the way we went to a waterhole where we saw 46 elephants. I was in pure heaven! There were three families there including some really small baby elephants that were so CUTE! We watched them walk and wash and splash each other and it was just incredible. I nearly cried! I got really emotional and had one of those “Oh my God, I’m in Africa and I’m watching elephants” moments – so weird! On the way back we managed to get separated from the boy bus as Stanley took a wrong turning and by the time we turned around they had vanished but we caught up with them when we reached Okaukejo. We were planning to swim here but they wanted to charge us $30 each to swim as we weren’t staying there that night so we couldn’t. Stanley and Festus went to look at the waterhole there while I tried to debate with the Staff about the swimming! Stanley then came back for me as there were 5 elephants at the waterhole. This was the most amazing, wonderful, incredible sight I have ever seen and I could have stayed for days watching! We sat so close to the waterhole that if I had jumped the fence I could have touched an elephant in under 20 seconds. There were loads of zebras and springbok and 5 massive elephants and it was just unbelievable. Unfortunately we could only stay about 10 minutes as we needed to go and get the children and Ms Rachel but that 10 minutes totally made the trip for me. I also bought a little wooden spoon here with an elephant on the top for remembrance!
We were then told of a sighting of lions about 22km away so the lion hunt was back on! We drove in eager anticipation until we reached the water hole where there were so many zebras, gemsbok, springbok and ostrich. We could also see two lions sitting down eating – one male and one female. They were quite difficult to see but the binoculars were very useful and were passed around eagerly. They were so magnificent – in particular the male. It then got quite funny as they started “making love” which the children found hilarious – especially the girls with the binoculars at this point! Stanley and I tried to eat the sour worms that I had bought in Outjo but they had all melted together into a sticky mass and we had to use his pen knife to try and cut it all up!
After lunch of Vet Koekies and an ice lolly (special treat) for the children we headed for Otjikondo. We got back at about 5:00 – I was totally exhausted after no sleep and being in the sun driving all day but couldn’t be happier! After telling Chelcie everything and exchanging our presents! (You’d think that we had been parted for longer than 2 days – we both bought presents and left each other notes when I left! We have also started talking in sync and finishing each other sentences and we haven’t even lived together for 2 months yet!). I bought her a Cheetah postcard and she got me a welcome back Appletiser (!) I put all the photos from Ms Rachel’s camera on to the laptop. Although the only thing I wanted to do now was to get into bed we had already decided, before we left for Etosha, to have a Braai that night so Stanley, Festus and Tabs were coming for supper. The actual Braai was a bit of a disaster as we had picked the wrong wood?! We were told it would’ve poisoned us so everything had to be transferred to the two hot plates so we ate in stages! However, Gilly has decided to buy us an oven which is hugely exciting and will make meals more varied! We had a really fun night and after some Savannah Dry (Namibian cider!) I felt a lot less tired! Went to bed very happy having had two of the most amazing, unbelievable days of my life, with the photos to prove it!
Love as usual to everyone and hope that you are all well. Special thanks to the Cranes as without their recommendation I would never have thought of bringing my binoculars with me and they made the whole trip even more spectacular as I was able to see the animals in such detail.
Ottilie xxx
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