I was wakened by the chirping of the thousands of chestnut weavers in the tall reed bed outside our room. What a great way to start spring.
We left the Kunene River lodge at 8:30 and travelled 48km to our first stop, Ruacana Falls. We passed a number of nomadic Himba villages, then through a mountainous area, with some pretty steep roads and back into dry mopani regions. During this section we clocked over 5000km on this trip so far.
We came over a mountain and the Caleque Dam and Ruacana Hydroelectric scheme were across the valley on the next mountain. The section from the hydroelectric power station to the falls was on a tar road, our first in a long time.
The falls were a touch disappointing, as the rock face with cascading waterfalls one sees in pictures were completely dry. There was a section of waterfall lower down to our left of the cliff face but nowhere near as impressive as Epupa Falls.
Our next stretch was 20km on tarred road into Ruacana for fuel and to buy a new battery for Tony as his has been flat for the last couple of days. It is also here that Tony and Al head off towards Namatoni in Etosha, they are changing around the last few days of the trip to arrive home earlier.
At Ruacana they had a decent fuel station, with a general dealer store with arb items, like back scratchers. Tony managed to get a battery, while he and Gray installed it, George spied out birds – at the fuel station :). The town from what we could see were mainly pre-fab structures, post war relics I guess. I chatted to our girls – bit concerned about Robs who has an infection in the bone between her brain and ear, but she is on medication and ensures me she is fine.
We passed the Ruacana Air Force Base and turned right to Otjondeka and Kumanjab, the others carried on straight via Oshakati to Namatoni. George and Sue are only going 50km on the Oshakati road in search of the Grey Kestrel and will double back to meet us at Olifantsrus. We are going ahead to secure a nice camp site for the night. We were pleasantly surprised to find the road newly tarred took us the whole way to Etosha. The road was however not plain sailing, the speed limit of 120km/hour didn't apply as we were constantly stopping for cattle, donkeys and goats to cross the road – it was probably more dangerous than the mountain passes. There was however very little traffic.
The area was again mainly mopani vegetation, so dry the majority didn't have leaves. There were small areas of Himba populations, where the Ovahimba women had cultivated small field of mohangu. The temperature was 31 degrees, it goes up to around 45 deg in summer.
I guess it has been school holidays, during our trip, as all the schools along the way have been closed, except for the odd bush school lessons we have seen taking place. Today, however we noticed a few children walking along the road near one of the small towns in school uniform – no mom’s 4x4, au pair or even a taxi.
At Werda, we were stopped at a veterinary control point. They sprayed our tyres and we has to walk over a wet mat. They checked our car fridge for meat, as were not allowed to take meat through due to foot and mouth. We had stopped earlier and hidden chicken and sausages on the roof rack, amongst the camping equipment. These items are permitted but we didn't want to take chances with our dinner.
We arrived at Gallton Gate at Etosha around 2:15, booked in and paid. Gray then spent the next ½ hour assisting a Cape Town couple pump up their tyres with his portable pump. The first few kilometers along the white dust road was still mopani, then it opened up into beautiful bush area; yellow grass littered with typical African bush trees. We didn't see much on the road but the water holes were a different story. At one we saw a black rhino (minus horn), wildebeest, red hartebeest, springbok, zebra and a giraffe.
Olifantsrus, is an old elephant culling station, that has been turned into an eco campsite. They have an amazing double story hide overlooking a waterhole. We headed up there for another amazing African sunset and to watch the animals come down to drink.
We then set up camp and started dinner. As we are nearing the end of our journey, so are our provisions. We also didn't have Al keeping control – she would have platzed at our less than gourmet attempts. Firstly, no table cloth, the delicious meal of Russian sausages, cheese wors with mustard sauce and beans with chilli, garlic, ginger and anything else we could find was all eaten straight off the braai and out the pots – no plates to wash !!
The boys headed off to bed after a long days drive. Sue and I returned to the hide, where they have a red light illuminating the area. We saw brown hyena, black rhino, eland and marsh and barn owls. All in all, today was a great start to our animal viewing list in Etosha.
My camp mattress is getting more comfortable or maybe on our last night of camping I was just getting used to sleeping on the ground, or more likely it was listening to the sound of laughing hyenas and my favorite sound of the bush, roaring lions, and they were close.
No comments:
Post a Comment