There are just three camps in the park, all run by the Namibia Wildlife Resort Ltd. which is fully owned by
the Namibian state. Comfort in these camps is acceptable but can not be compared to the lodges right next to
the National Park. So Petra had booked an excellent lodge - the Etosha-Aoba-Lodge - for our night before entering
the Etosha National Park from the eastern entrance (aka "Von Lindquist Gate"). They do offer sundowner trips on their
property, and they are performed by the owner himself, Georg.
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Now, Georg has a story of his own (immigrated to Namibia in 1993 after having run the IT department of the
fair in Frankfurt, Germany, built up the lodge and retired in 2003), and his 7,000 ha property is now home
to plenty of animals. And while Georg drives us slowly through his "garden", as he calls it, we suddenly
encounter Zebras on the road! Wow.
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And then, just a minute later, we see Peggy - one of the many resident giraffes on his property.
We are stunned by the beauty of the animal and by the fact that Georg can apparently distinguish all his
giraffes, but he smiles and says, "well, I call all my giraffes Peggy, because that was one of the sentences
I started my English lessons with - 'This is Peggy, the giraffe.'" :-)
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Anyway, suddenly a second giraffe comes along, just a few meters from us, and we are happy. Happy to have
finally arrived at Etosha. Happy to have seen zebras and giraffes already. "Don't worry", says Georg, "you
will see plenty of zebras and giraffes in the National Park".
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So Georg goes on to show us many other interesting sites, like this spider's nest, home to up to 200 spiders. Yikes!
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We also learn a lot about Termites, probably more than we would ever want to know, but Georg knows so much about this
and tells it in an easy-to-understand and interesing fashion that we listen to him open-mouthed. This, for example, is
an inactive Termites Mound. When you see those holes in the mound, the whole colony is gone already...
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Termites always need a closed surface to their mound because it's their air condition. It can heat up and cool down the
mound. The height and style of the mound is actually just a reaction to the temperature of the location of the mound.
This is an active mound, and the dark spots on the surface are actually from water that has been brought up to the
surface in order to cool the temperature down. We are speechless.
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Another beautiful photo of the game drive. There were some clouds at the horizon, so we would not be able to enjoy
the real African sunset, but it was a fantastic trip anyway.
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Oh yes, we were very happy that evening, right in the middle of nowhere, with a Winhoek Lager beer, surrounded by the awesome
African wilderness. Could it get any better? Well, turn the page and see...
Photo: Christian Müller
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