Now there we go... talking about wild animals... After the donkey we got Impala, many standing along the road mostly in pairs and normally just standing still without jumping on the road. Other Animals just walk on when they like and care little about cars. So we drove carefully!

Impala	Ostriches

Plenty Ostriches in Botswana. Also Namibia has a lot of wildlife but it's more restricted to the parks. One famous park is Etosha, it features a huge salt pan in the middle, three rivers fill the pan once a year and than things dry up till the next rains. On our way up to the border of Angola we did a little detour and drove through the park. 

Springbok	Wildebeest

Not sure how much more to write... the photo's speak for them self. But I'll try. One thing is that the animals don't have much fear for cars, so you can get really up close. The moment they see humans they would keep respectful distance but a car is seen as harmless. It's actually not allowed anywhere in the park to leave the car. One Japanese tourist who did get out of the car for a close up photo ended up as breakfast for the seemingly sleepy lions... 

Smiling Zebra	Cheetah

The first zebras were exiting to see, but as the other Dada warned me soon it's like, Oh, an other zebra... So many! Seeing a cheetah family was a rare sight. Most predators hide from the heat, meat eating animals have hard time to keep their body cool so they hide in the shade and sleep during the day. Many other features are very different from vegetarians, including Humans! We have little in common with carnivores but during the ice age we started eating meat as there was not much else. Most of us didn't stop after that and both body, mind and soul suffers from eating the wrong things. Not to speak of the suffering the animals undergo so we can eat them!

Our standard brunch and dinner for two weeks: Bread with butter, avocado, tomato and cheese. This was brunch while waiting at one of the water holes. Our waiting was rewarded when a big family of elephants turned up.

The Etosha pan, as far as the eye can see	Not sure if s/he was laughing or just fed up with photo's

The Etosha pan is big, with 150x60Km it is about a third of the size of the Netherlands! Though you can argue that the Netherlands are really small:-) It was getting hot very quick and this was only Winter. Many animals would frequent the water holes to drink and cool down.

Baby elephants are very cute	Giraffe

An other waterhole and after a while an even bigger herd of elephants came. It's interresting to see their social structure, who drinks first, how they take care of the young. After drinking many would use the trunk to spray water and mud all over themselvs, than they would role over in the muddy water and lastly get  out and blow dust all over them. The little baby was jumping, running and so fast that I had a hard time to get a nice photo. At one point s/he was staring at me with the ears wide and the trunk pointing at me. Very cute... I pressed the button and... the photo shows his/her bum toward me! To quick, it had jumped a 180. I was fun to watch it play.

Black faced Impala	A Secretary bird

More animals and big birds too. The Secretary bird probably stands close to a metre high and typed most of this edition... They have trouble with the ten finger blind system but like many humans, happily peck away with high speed. It also did my accounts and filed the photos. They actually got their name because the feathers on the back of the head were used to make writing pens.

Hard to get to the water with such long legs... Actually when they are born they fall almost two meters down. How's that for a start!

And how is this for a temporary end:-)

More soon, this was only July...

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