Tuesday 21 September 2010

More on Etosha

Etosha is more than just madly dashing from one waterhole to another, although when your day is planned out, that's what you do.  It's just that you do it in an organised fashion, the best idea is to head out at the crack of dawn having picked a waterhole to head to the evening before.  The gates open at sunrise and close at sunset, so if you head off to one of the farther waterholes from which ever camp you are staying at, you can be in for a long day.
What we'd like to do one day is to head to Etosha for a couple of weeks and spend a few days at each camp, focusing on a waterhole a day.  Get there as soon as you can, spend the day there and take a series of photos throughout the day, documenting what comes and goes throughout the day. 
There's a fair variety of animals that come and go as well as bird life.  There's the birds that endemic as well as the migratory birds that come and go.  The guys on the left are Kori Bustards, the heaviest of the flighted birds in Africa, they are big but not ungainly and look so solid, they would probably dress out with enough meat to feed a large family with some left overs for the next few days.
One of the more unique things that we saw on one of our days there was a group of male giraffes who were fighting.  Our guide thought at first they they were just posturing, seeing who was the largest and sizing each other up.  The photo at the right shows them taking a quick drink before they got down to business.  Almost in unison, they paired off and started what looked like a dance, their necks were like the snakes that you see intertwined supporting each other as they wound their way across the veldt.  All of a sudden, started swinging their heads with intent, obviously trying to deliver a great whack to each other.  We were about 100 metres away and you could hear the almighty thump as their heads landed on their opponents flank.  It really was something to watch, it was fascinating, it looked as if it was happening in slow motion (a trite and overused term but it really was like that!).
Take a look at the photo to the left, there's dust flying everywhere, their necks are bent around trying to beat the crap out of their opponent and there's the third guy just looking on waiting his turn.  All of this went on for quite some time, they would stop for a short time and then resume beating the each other up.  This was really only their pre-courtship time, it's serious but not intended to inflict serious harm on each other.  For that they lash out with their hooves, something that's generally reserved for the big cats, the lions, that hunt them, and yes, a pride of lions can take one of these down, we actually see the results of that later in our trip.
Later in the evening, just before we had to dash to the Von Lindequist Gate, situated on the eastern edge of the park, we decided to take a quick detour round a waterhole where we had seen a rhino earlier in the day.  I wouldn't call it a sighting, he was deep in the bush and really only a silhouette against the blue sky, that's about it no photos.
We were driving along quite slowly when we saw two baby giraffe just quietly hiding just off the side of the road.  These two little guys ( a relative term when you think they weigh well over 100kg and fall 2 metres to the ground when they are born) were quietly observing us just passing by, not moving much, just swivelling their heads to keep track of us.

Not a bad way to end the day!!


Cheers

DADFAP

Friday 17 September 2010

Etosha, the Gem of the Namibian Wildlife Parks

Etosha, situated about 350km north of the capital Windhoek, is the largest of the wildlife parks in Namibia.  Generally speaking, it's well organised with the Namibian Wildlife Resorts, a government company is responsible for the resorts within the parks.  The camps on the periphery, which supply a lot of the day traffic through the park, are privately owned and generally have traversing rights within the park. Gate at the Entrance to Etosha National ParkImage via WikipediaThe park accounts for about 45% of the revenue generated by the National Parks in Namibia, attracting 200,000 visitors each year.
NWR has spent a  lot of money improving the facilities at the camps, when we were there a few years ago, they had just started the renovations at the camps and the concern expressed by many was the NWR were about to embark on a campaign to drastically reduce the camping and lower  / mid tier accommodation, instead focusing on the higher end tourist trade.
One of the biggest problems with government parks, including those in South Africa is that you need to be within the resort gates by sunset, great idea from an organisation standpoint but it means that you miss many of the late afternoon sightings at waterholes that you can get at the private reserves.  On balance though, Etosha is a great place, animals galore, facilities that are available to people staying within the resorts and day trippers.
Anyway, about this trip, we stayed a few nights in and around Etosha and I'll spend a couple of posts on this part of the trip.  Follow the link highlighted in the previous sentence, it goes to a NASA site where there's some history on Etosha and a great photo of the salt pan.
We stayed at Onguma tented lodge after we left the Waterberg Wilderness, this is near the Anderson gate at the eastern edge of the park.  The closest of the NWR camps is Okaukuejo Camp which is particularly well known for the floodlit waterhole there.  We got some awesome shots there of a large herd of elephants descending (and yes I do mean descending as everything else around the waterhole scarpered when the elephants arrived) and the other animals frequenting the waterhole.  All in all, some of the best shots that we got in and around Etosha were shot in one short period at Okaukuejo.
Onguma has only 4 chalets, it's extremely intimate focusing on providing exceptional service to the guests there.  The food is exceptional, providing the best Eland steaks I have ever had and the staff go out of their way to make sure that you are having an exceptional time.
Directly outside the lodge they have a waterhole designed to maximise viewing potential and that's the first place we had ever seen giraffes drinking, it's not exactly beautiful but they manage it with a degree of elegance that belies their size.  Take a look at the guy on the right, we caught him as he was lifting his head, water is cascading from his moth as he lifts his head.  Oh yeah, something interesting, a giraffe has the same number of vertebrae as a human being, just they are a tad larger!  This waterhole was well visited by other animals too, we say a hyena (which we were too bloody slow to photograph) and plenty of antelope.  We also spotted this black back jackal in the area around the lodge.  These guys really are intriguing creatures, the seem to skulk around everywhere, around lodges, picnic sites, harassing lions and generally scavenging what ever is on offer.  
When you take a look at the photograph of the pan in the link above (Etosha) you get an idea of the size but not of the effect on the park.  Having been there in the height of summer seeing what it is like then, the shimmering on the horizon is there but it's not like in summer when the shimmer is there and coupled with the heat blasting off of the salt encrusted surface of the pan.  The zebra in this photo were just kind of hanging around, one of them was rolling in the dust taking a bath the others just standing keeping him company.
There's a surprisingly large number of animals who loiter on the pan throughout the day, even during the middle of the day when, even during the winter season, the daytime temperatures make the place pretty inhospitable.
Interestingly, the soil in the pan plays a very important role in the life of both the animals and the surrounding environment.  The animals eat the soil for the minerals, it provides the missing minerals and trace elements that is lacking in the vegetation.  It also provides nutrients for the vegetation downwind of the park. 
Etosha is the flagship of the whole tourist industry in Namibia, it;s deserving of this because there is everything there that you could want to see and the facilities are pretty good.  NWR also has a lodge within the park that we haven't stayed at yet, we haven't stayed there yet, so that gives us yet another excuse to head down there when we get the opportunity.

Cheers


DADFAP






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Wednesday 8 September 2010

The Rhino we met at Wilderness

I am going to start this blog answering a question that I received from a friend of mine about the comment I made about the argument between conservationists and preservationists.  basically, it was "what's the difference between a preservationist and a conservationist?" 
In my mind the preservationist argument is completely unreasonable, they want to shut off huge tracts of land and let them become what they were.  
The conservationist view is that nature and man have to co-exist and that we need to find a way to manage the environment in a sustainable way, providing for a growing population and allowing the wild life to have as natural a life as possible.  
Wilderness Lodge:          One of the lodges we stayed at was the Waterberg Wilderness lodge where we stayed for 2 nights.  It's well up into the Waterberg Range, not quite on the plateau, about 200m or so below it.  When you drive up from the plains, along the track that winds through the scrub, pretty steep in places you start to wonder where you're headed.  Persevere as it's worth the journey.
When you take the final turn and you see where the lodge is situated, hard up against the rock wall, you get a hell of a surprise.  There are banana trees, coffee plants and a wide variety of "exotic" plants there.  Most of these are remnants of previous agricultural enterprises that have been attempted on the site of the current lodge.
It's an enjoyable lodge for 2 nights, I think that 3 would be a stretch as it's not a lodge with an abundance of wildlife.  The food is good as is the staff, the rooms are reasonably large, clean and have decent sized bathrooms.  As I mentioned in my last post, the "cultural bias" of the lodge was obvious here too.  The vast majority of the clients of this lodge were German, mostly families enjoying the summer break.  We met one guy who I am sure, given the opportunity would move there in a heartbeat, he spends every vacation that he can there, enjoying the opportunity to just get out and walk in the veldt.
 For me, the highlight was the Rhino.  Our first game drive was the afternoon we arrived there and about 30 minutes into it I was wondering what they were going to find to keep me entertained.  We had been driving a little over 30 minutes when the guide stopped the vehicle and jumped out, I asked him why he was stopping and he said so that we could get out and walk to the Rhino.   I have to tell you people, that I was using the other passengers as traction, I wanted out and near these beasties so bad!!!
We walked into the bush for about 250m and there they were, just strolling through the bush, we ended up about 15 metres from them, unfortunately it was pretty thick bush and the photos were rubbish.  Mind you, I was edging as close as I could, trying to position myself ahead of where they were headed so that I could get better shots.  Mrs Dadfap and I got scratched all over our legs and arms by the thorny acacia, we didn't even notice most of them in the excitement.  I snagged one of my ears on a thorn bush and didn't even notice it until I was back in the vehicle and wiped some blood off of my neck.  I could hardly wait until the next afternoon when we could have another crack at them.
Day two came along and as we had the afternoon game drive ahead of us, we decided to join the hike up to the escarpment.  It was a killer, especially for someone as unfit as me but again, it was something worth persevering and getting done.  When you are up there, it's breathtaking, the plateau is home to the only herd of buffalo outside of the Caprivi Strip, elsewhere in Namibia they are banned because of the diseases they spread to the domestic livestock.
The escarpment is also home to many of the antelope species that inhabit the plains below.  It also has some fig species that seem to grow from the smallest of cracks in the rock, sending their root system down the face of the rock to anchor the trees into what soil there is.  It would be an awesome place to overnight, watching the sunset on one side and the sunrise on the other side of the escarpment.
Back to the Rhino.  Knowing what to expect on the afternoon game drive, all I could think about was the Rhino and the opportunities we'd get to walk near and photograph them.  Because of the poaching that goes on and to make them easier to find, there's a security guy with the Rhino all day.  He starts with them at 6 in the morning, tracking them from where he left off the previous evening.  And yes, he really is as close as he looks in the photo to the left.
 Walking up to these two rhino is made all that much easier because the female required extensive veterinary attention when she was fairly young.  The male was introduced to keep her company and both have become "relatively" comfortable around people.  The second afternoon really was quite funny, we walked as close as we could to the rhino who were resting, they saw us coming and decided that it was time for them to get up.  Now, when they are lying down or when you are in a vehicle looking down at them, they don't seem so big.  Trust me, when you are on foot close to them, they look absolutely huge. As we walked towards them, they decided to start walking straight at us, what ensued was a pair of rhino mustering us like dumb sheep back from whence we came.  They quite literally herded us all back to the vehicle.  
I was more interested in getting decent shots and often had to be "encouraged" by the guide to beat a retreat.  To be honest, every time he suggested we move, I did, as anxious as I was to get decent shots, I sure as hell didn't want to become part of the topsoil as one of them ran me into the ground.  In all seriousness, it never even felt like it would get to that stage, the guides are very aware of what's going on, where their guests are and how to keep them moving so they don't spook the rhino.
 As I said, they herded us right back to the cars with many of the passengers taking refuge in them.  Staying as close to the  rhino as I could I took some shots, trying to stay as close as possible but not making our guide too nervous.  The rhino seemed to be having great fun, they wandered round the Landrover for a while, never really threatening or behaving in a threatening manner.  In the shot above, I am about 20 metres from the boy, who weighs in at around 3000Kg, he's not fully grown yet, he still has aboit another 500kg to go.
The shot above and to the right is the male starting towards us, I am not at the front on my own, our guide is standing just to my right, he's pretty calm at this point, just telling me to move slowly and not make too much noise.  The next shot is just before the guide and I moved back closer to the vehicles.  The guide let the rhino get to within about 15 meters of us before he decided that I had pushed my luck enough.  The amazing this is that the rhino was actually looking straight at us, I know that they don't have the greatest vision so I tried to move as casually as I could.  What really surprised me was that it wasn't till I took the camera away from my eye, I realised just how bloody close he was.  I heeded the advice of the guide and we slowly moved back to the vehicles.
 
The fun hadn't finished as yet.  We left the rhino in peace and went off for that most civilised of African traditions, the Sundowner!!!  really, really enjoyed these!!!  As we were driving back to the lodge, we encountered the rhino again, obviously still in a playful mood.  The male continued walking towards the vehicle, they normally move aside and into the bush as a vehicle approaches.  The guide stopped the vehicle, turned off the engine and waited for them to move off.  Instead, the male walked right up to the bull bar on the front of the Landrover, put his weight against it and gave a gentle shove.  The vehicle moved back a couple of centimetres and the boy thought that he had made his point, I am big enough to make a difference if I want to!!   This was only our second lodge and I was beginning to wonder already if this would be THE highlight of the trip.  
Rhino's are right up there in my mind with Wild Dogs as being the most engaging animals in the veldt, they also share the unfortunate status of being amongst the most vulnerable animals on the continent.  Wild Dogs are THE most endangered of the large carnivores, Rhino (some species of the White Rhino anyway) aren't as close to extinction as the Wild Dogs, but judging by the reports in the following article, they won't be far behind.
There are plenty of societies and organisations you can join in an effort to battle this callous and bloody murdering of wildlife, one is on my Blogroll on the right.
Cheers
DADFAP
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Saturday 4 September 2010

Epako Lodge, Erongo Namibia

Our first lodge of this trip was Epako Lodge in Erongo about 3 hours drive north of Windhoek, a nice easy drive out from the Capital.  It didn't take long before we saw some baboons, driven from the extremely dry bush to try their luck in the highway dividing strip. We hadn't driven much more than 15km from the centre of town when we encountered the first troupe busy digging up their morning meal.

 This was our first trip during the summer and the difference between a trip in July and a trip in February is amazing. Even though the annual rainfall in Namibia (if you exclude the Caprivi Strip in the north of the country) is around 36cm (14.5") a year because it all falls in a short period the effects over the wet season (Jan - Mar) are amazing.  The bush quite literally explodes during that short period and the whole countryside is completely different.
Our trip earlier this year was in February when the average precipitation is 8cm, fast forward to July / August and it drops to nil.  Some of the shots that we took will show this, in later posts to the blog, you'll see the difference.

Epako lodge is a pretty enjoyable lodge, it's run by a very cheerful French guy and his Dutch wife.  They have been there for around 15 years and in Africa for 30 or so.  Get to talking with them if you go, some of the stories he can tell about working in West Africa just go to show how much "fun" that part of the world can be.

The lodge has a good variety of game and provides enough variety to keep you occupied for a 2 night stay.  We managed to see a number of the more elusive creatures of the African veldt this trip and at Epako we saw the first of them, an Aardvark.  

The food is pretty good too but for our tastes, the presentation and whole dining experience is a little too European for us.  Something that was more noticeable to us on this trip, much more than any other, was the "cultural bias" of the lodges where we stayed.  If the host was French, German or of other European extraction, the clientele was overwhelmingly from the same country, this hadn't stuck out quite so much for us in previous trips.
Epako has a family of Rhino, the female is now too old to breed but she has a calf at foot, he's a couple of years old now and just about ready to be shown the door.  The first evening we were there, the male came and joined the group by the waterhole and started to become a little amorous.

 You can see in the photo at the left, she wasn't too happy about the advances from the big male and tried to see him off.  She had a scar along one side of her head that was the result of an earlier encounter with the male.  She also has a weird large horn that bends forward rather than the normal curved rear facing normal shaped horn.  Apparently, she lost her horn when she was very young when she charged a vehicle and it hasn't grown back in the normal shape.

The two of them had a protracted game of push and shove, the male weighs in at around 3500Kg, substantially larger than the female.  She didn't back down too much though as you can see from the shot to the left, there was plenty of dust kicked up by the two.

As I said, things are pretty dry in Namibia at the moment and Epako was feeding out hay to the larger grazers to keep them in decent shape.  They harvest the long grass by the road side and bale it up as farmers would cereal hay.  There are two advantages to this, a cheap source of roughage which will at least keep the grazers fed and it reduces the potential for road side fires.  There was plenty of evidence of this as we toured around, small spot fires that had been extinguished.

Like many lodges, Epako had some of the large cats in captivity, held large camps (African term for paddock) and we had the opportunity to feed these beautiful creatures and photograph them.  Epako keeps a couple of Cheetah that are fed by the tourists each evening.  These obviously have become used to this and can't be released. 

I really have mixed feelings about these types of arrangements and even photographing the animals in these situations even if they do provide some great shots.  The animals clearly cannot be released due to the increased familiarity with and dependence on humans for their food, however, if they have been trapped and then released into these enclosures it's because they have been preying on livestock and valuable game on commercial game farms.




It's not exactly conservation in the true sense but it's much better than the alternative, being seriously wounded in a snare by poachers or poorer farmers in an attempt to protect their livestock.



There is massive debate in Africa over how to protect the land, the wildlife, traditional cultures while the various countries progress.  There's the argument between conservationists and preservationists as well as the farm lobby and the green movement, as there is in other countries.  There is also the problem in Namibia of the death of the San Bushmen culture, with some believing that the culture will become almost extinct within the next generation or two.


Although we love the country and enjoy ourselves immensely there, there's much that as a tourist we don't get to see nor do we completely understand the problems.  It is however, a country with enormous potential and there are some very innovative, forward thinking and dedicated people working towards viable solutions to the conservation issues.  More on them later as we visited places on this trip dedicated to providing solutions. 


Cheers
DADFAP

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