Trips

Sun., 9/3/2017 – Etosha
       For this morning's game drive we bundled up to stay warm and our driver used a searchlight looking for animals as it was still quite dark.  After sunrise, we found the same lion pride we saw last evening going after a warthog in its burrow.  One warthog was able to flee the lioness that was chasing him and the other just burrowed deeper in his hole.  The lions dug into his hole and we watched for an hour but the warthog never came out.  We don’t know if he escaped because the lions were still lying around the hole seven hours later.

Out for an early morning hunt	Going after the warthog
Going after the warthog	Going after the warthog
There goes the one who got away	Going after the warthog
Going after the warthog	I'm tired - you do the digging
Two movies of the lions trying to dig out the Warthog - quite entertaining Movie 1 and Movie 2 (Keep the image small and you may want to mute the sound)
At 8 AM we finally entered Etosha National Park.  We drove around for 6 hours and saw lots of animals.        One of today's highlights was seeing two female ostriches and about 41 ostrich chicks.  The oldest female keeps all of the eggs in one nest.  She incubates them during daylight and the black male sits on them at night for camouflage.  Out of these 41 chicks, maybe only 8 or 10 will live to maturity.  The chicks are easy pray for eagles, lions, other big cats, etc.  The chicks looked like miniature ostriches a foot high! They ran across the road heading for who knows where and then they spotted the lion in the grass ahead of them and very quickly reversed back to where they were coming from!
Guinea Fowl and Black-backed Jackal	Kori Bustard
Ostriches	Ostriches
Ostriches	Ostriches
Kudu	Giraffes
Yellow-billed Hornbill	Yellow-billed Hornbill with lunch
Crimson-breasted Shrike	Golden-wattle Acacia
Golden Mongoose	Northern Black Korhaan
Springbok	Hartebeests
Impala	Impalas
Kudu	Sleeping Leopard
Sleeping Leopard	Sleeping Leopard
Kudu with broken horn	One of the best places to see and watch the animals is at the waterholes provided by the Park. We went to three of the water holes. One was empty of animals, the second was being guarded by 3 lionesses so the animals were standing at a distance, and the third one had a male lion on the wall around the pump that feeds the water pool.  He finally jumped down inside the wall and thousands of zebras, springbok, oryx, and 2 giraffes more or less took turns drinking at the pool.  We watched for at least a half-hour. It is so interesting to watch the "pecking order" at work and how the various species get along with each other.        Etosha means “white place” so our driver took us to see the huge salt pan inside the park.  The pan is half the size of Switzerland!  It was once a lake fed by two rivers.  The rivers changed direction (probably due to earth movement) and the lake dried up leaving the huge saltpan.
Lion at the waterhole	At the waterhole
At the waterhole	At the waterhole
At the waterhole	Elderly Elephant
Still waiting for the Warthog to appear!	Still waiting for the Warthog to appear!

       After dinner the wind picked up and there was a lot of lightening in the distance.  From 12 to 2 AM the lightning and thunder was all around us and I got up to shut our porch door and window.  I thought it was trying to rain.   The rainy season doesn’t start until the end of October.  Unfortunately, I don’t think it rained, just wind and lightning.   It sounded like our tent would blow down!

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