Etosha Pan - a salt pan which lies like a vast silver sea at the heart of Namibia's premier wildlife reserve - is hard to describe. Shimmering, lifeless, it stretches out to the horizon and reaches into the sky - until suddenly you see a troop of oryx plodding silently across it, way off in the [...]
Month: May 2016
Battle of the titans
The viewing site at Etosha's Halali camp is built into a rocky crag, with the cliff at your back and the Moringa waterhole below. You look down upon an arena, or theatre, with the evening sun in your eyes, until the light begins to fade and the orange glow of the floodlights comes on. Trundling down the path [...]
Etosha waterholes
A lot of our viewing in Etosha was at the waterholes, where we would sit in the car and wait and watch, and watch and wait. Sometimes we would see stuff, and sometimes we wouldn't. On the open plains, too, we would drive and drive and see very little, and then we would come across vast [...]
Etosha in pictures
From the black rhino that paddled in the waterhole one night at Okaukuejo, to the hulking, huge bull elephant who loomed out of the bushes near where we were parked and scared the bejesus out of us, here are a few more Etosha images.
Sunset, Okaukuejo
Day One in Etosha ended as it had begun, back at the Okaukuejo camp. The camps in the park, run by Namibia Wildlife Resorts, were comfortable and clean, though not always well maintained, and the staff, I regret to say, were for the most part graduates of the Soviet school of hospitality - surly, unhelpful, [...]
The Okondeka Road
You know how it is, I have work to do - so here are a couple more photos taken along the road to Okondeka. When it comes to procrastination, I am a master...
A citizen of Canada
One hundred and twenty five people, from thirty four countries, assembled at 8 a.m. in a courtroom in Mississauga yesterday to take the oath and receive their Canadian citizenship. The presiding judge had come as a child as an immigrant from Pakistan; the clerk of the court was from Jamaica. Waiting to be sworn in were men, [...]
The Road to Okondeka
The road to Okondeka runs west from the Okaukuejo camp, the main rest camp in Namibia's fabulous Etosha wildlife reserve. You head out across open plains, waving with grasses, and then the salt pan comes into view on your right, a silver, lunar sea that runs to the horizon. A haze of heat and dust [...]
Like a bird
After the wedding, R&R in the Cederberg.... One form of relaxation, embraced by some of the younger set, was flight - more specifically, taking to the skies with one of South Africa's top aerobatic pilots, and threading through the valleys of the Cederberg practically at ground level, following the contours, buzzing the camp rooftops and [...]
Cederberg
You've seen pictures of the wedding - here are some pictures of the Cederberg. In a lovely gesture, Hayley and Jonathan arranged for family and friends to join them for a couple of days in the wild and dramatic setting of the Cederberg Mountains, about two hours up the West Coast from Cape Town, for [...]