Etosha
Etosha is one of the best game reserves in Africa. It is amazing that anything can live on this vast arid plain and the fact that elephants, giraffes, zebra and many kinds of antelope amongst other large animals thrive in such abundance is a miracle.
We took the “gravel” road to Etosha. This kind of road is one that the builders forgot to finish, or they ran out of tar. Consequently, your car, leaving a billowing trail of dust in its wake, will rattle and shake until the joints knock and bits start falling off. An ordinary saloon is no good for this kind of road. You need a 4×4, and a tough one at that. Then you can fly at speed across the ridges and bumps, sneering at their attempts to slow you down and wreck your car. The roads inside the game reserve were even worse. Here there were ridges the size of the Grand Canyon and pot-holes the depth of Cheddar Gorge. We zigzagged our way along the Etosha roads like drunken maniacs with the ominous clanking of universal joints in our ears. But the view outside the car was astounding. In the distance we saw a group of giraffes towering above the trees. We had to take photos. We had not seen a group of giraffes before. By the end of the day, after photographing dozens of giraffes within kicking distance we realised how lame the first photos were.
We seemed to see springbok, impala and zebra at every turn. They watched us from the side of the road as though thoroughly bored by the whole business. At least they didn’t demand money to have their photograph taken. Humans are more canny. The other day I took a photo of the River Kavango as it meandered through a particularly interesting piece of countryside. In the distance I heard a woman calling to me. It turned out she wanted money as I’d apparently taken her photo. She was a blob in the far distance and not a very interesting one at that. Though I admired her enterprising spirit and sheer gall, she was disappointed that day.
We hadn’t seen an elephant all day and when we’d just about given up, a proud male came marching majestically out of the bush. For some reason all the other animals abandoned the water hole allowing the elephant free reign to wallow in the mud.
We visited several water holes that day and saw many elephants squirting water and chucking dust over themselves. Springbok lined up at the water’s edge sipping nervously, giraffes splayed out their legs doing the splits in an effort to have a drink. Amazingly, they managed to recover their posture with little effort. The birds were too laid back and didn’t notice the black-backed jackal stalking them until it had one in its jaws. It was a light snack and gone in a second. The jackal had a harder job surprising the birds after that. One very common bird was the kori bustard. Karin, our Dutch friend, misheard this, we assume, and every time she spotted this large bird she would shout with glee,
“Look, there’s another bastard over there!”
There were lions and leopards in the park but we didn’t see any that day. As the sun sank, the hyenas began to slink out of the shadows one at a time on their way to the water-hole. Looking sly and savage they gathered together for the night’s hunting.
We looked around. All the other cars had left.
“The clock at the entrance definitely said closing at seven-thirty,” announced Georgina with her usual tone of misplaced confidence.
It was now getting quite dark and we were the only people on the road. We were locked in. I was driving and we picked up speed, considerable speed. We nearly took out an impala but it managed to jump off the road just in time. A large mass came into view by the side of the road. It was black and had a horn at one end.
“Rhinoceros,” I shouted, slamming on the brakes. By the time we had reversed, the rhino had sloped off into the bush leaving us with a view of its disappearing rump, which, strangely, resembled the expression on the face of the woman gate-keeper when we eventually arrived at the exit.
The tense conversation went like this:
“You’re late”
“The clock said 7.30 closing time.”
“The clock’s broken. Closing is seven.” (How did everyone else know?)
She frowned and obviously thought we were idiots or desperate criminals.
“Where’s your tickets?” Yes, we still had tickets.
“You Namibians?” As VSO we paid the local rate. Tourists pay at least double.
We didn’t look like Namibians and were obviously confidence tricksters.
With a humiliating amount of profuse apologies, ( I was prepared to go so far as throwing myself on the ground and kissing her feet) she capitulated and instructed her henchman to unlock the gate and let us out. As we drove back to the campsite we felt relieved that we had experienced a close encounter with the wildest creature in the game park and survived.