1. Elephants, animals of such grace, whether dusted a silvery white by the salt pan, slipping soothed and satisfied into a cooling waterhole, or even in the enchanting form of a baby elephant trying to cross the road while its anxious mother looked on.
2. Quelia, in the biggest flock of birds I have ever seen, and one that completely entranced us as it danced back and forth across a twilight sky above Namutoni waterhole. The respectful silence from the few onlookers present was filled only by the sound of 300,000 wingbeats from flocks that twisted, turned and swayed like shoals in the dusky orange sunset.
3. Lions - After spotting three young cubs visit a waterhole under the protective gaze of their mother, we thought we'd had our fair share of panthera leo. But two days later, while on a solo late-afternoon game drive, two large lions decided my parked truck was a great place to hang around, and treated me to 20 wonderful, and unnerving, minutes of their time.
4. Rhinos - we were lucky enough to see rhino mothers with young calves, both black rhino and the rarer white variety. But our most abiding memory is a full-on clash-of-the-titans battle at midnight - a bloody encounter which left one of the bruisers with two deep and dripping scars on his head.
5 The Pan - Etosha's shimmering white heart - a vast, bleached salt flat that stretches to the horizon and beyond, broken only by the writhing heat haze and the occasion black dot of an ostrich taking it's own hot and dusty path across the pan.
Namibia has been breathtaking, beguiling and bewitching in equal measure. We owe a big thank you two friends, Mary Askew and Andrew Forsyth, for their advice (and guide books) but more importantly being a very large part of the inspiration for this trip.
Henry
No comments:
Post a Comment