Vumbura to Etosha pan, Namibia

25 - 28 Oct 07

Moon up, sun down

We didn’t see any rhinos, one of the park’s attractions, but we saw a male lion, a jackal, Burchell zebra, ostriches, steenboks, black-faced impalas, and elands (the largest antelope) and the damara dik dik (the smallest antelope), in addition to the ubiquitous springboks, kudus, giraffes, oryxes and warthogs. As for birds, we saw the southern pale chanting goshawk, tawny eagle, white-backed vultures and the tiny redbilled quelea.
At Onguma Safari Lodge there were several splendid flame trees in the garden, and for once, our spacious room was blissfully air conditioned. It gets exceedingly hot here in the middle of the day and normally all we can do is either lie by the pool or take a siesta in our room. Here we even felt like working on the web pages!
We went for a sunset drive with the lodge’s guide Gideon. He warned us not to expect to see much wildlife as it was so dry. So, we were pleasantly surprised to see:
Birds: African hoopoe, weaver, fly catcher, starling, grey heron, maribu stork, tawny eagle, fork-tailed drongo, northern black korhaan, and the huge kori bustard.
Animals: the more common antelopes as well as damara dik dik (only found in Namibia), giraffe, warthogs, jackal, zebras, and black wildebeest with an attractive white tail.