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I had another lovely weekend here in Namibia. Spring [soon to be hot hot hot] is finally coming around at the cost of losing an hour today, but it sure made the game drive this weekend a memorable one. Previously, I've seen the brown/grey/tan colors of the grass and trees during my travels here and its nice seeing hints of the youthful spring green and flowers blooming on trees.
I traveled to the Elephant Lodge Game Reserve and was impressed with the management of the game. This place manages black rhino, 9 elephant, and a variety of other antelope African wildlife. Its always nice to escape from the city for at least a few hours. There were also captive leopards and cheetahs at this lodge, which is still a tough one for me to digest when you see such beautiful and strong animals pinned up behind fences, but then you realize they'd be poached, shot, or not able to survive alone.
Cheetahs make interesting sounds, especially when there is fresh donkey meat [all the donkeys you see in these pictures are raised to feed the leopards and cheetahs] around. And once the meat was securely lodged inside the cat's mouth -they were gone. One was reminded when they entered the bush and grasses further inside the pin, how effective their colors are in disguising them from other living things. One is incredibly lucky to see these animals in the wild.
My flip video player shot some great feeding and wildlife shots, but the MB's are too large to upload on the internet system here with the upload and download limits.
The owner was busy and I couldn't pin him down to talk about his nearly 20 year old operation. This place is a classic example of private landowners expanding areas with neighbors or buying up large sections of land, dropping fence down in the middle and managing with a large surrounding fence. There are so many questions I wanted to ask the owner. This area was an obvious all wildlife ecotourism success story.
............ Game Drive to Game Day in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Saturday marked the first Nebraska football game away from home, but I tried to make up the deficit by having a desert diner with my new friend Tina at O'Portuga's [Angolan/Portuguese restaurant] and watching the Germany [her team] vs. South Africa soccer game. The restaurant staff couldn't find the game but we both sucked it up and told stories about why we love our sports teams so much.
Congrats on the first game win of the season Huskers!
............ Pictures
Here are some select pictures from the game drive this weekend.
I hope you enjoy my most recent shots.
The first Leopard I've seen here in Namibia. His jaws crushed the donkey bones like tooth pics.
Our fearless tour guide with donkey meat in hand and very hungry cats on the other side.
A cheetah going in for the snag from another cheetah not in the picture.
A hornbill
Donkeys hiding from the hot sun
A view from the game drive:
Tracking Elephants with trackers. There is one large bull in the background:
My favorite giraffe picture yet:
More giraffes:
And springbok with a nice rocky backdrop:
Thank-you for stopping by!
Cheers,
A.E. Price
