THE TOUR: Day 4 - Namib-Naukluft National Park

July 4th. Wessel woke us up at 5 am. Lovely... The reason for the early morning (actually we had two kinds of morning on the tour - early morning and very early morning; the very early one was when we had to wake up before 6 am, early morning - between 6 and 8 am) was rather prosaic - 9 hours of driving to the next campsite ahead of us. Oh yeah :) Well, the truth is - we could sleep on the truck (and we did) so it wasn't that bad if you weren't Jan, the driver. And we weren't. :)

I remember stopping at a village that is supposed to have the best biltong ever. Biltong is dried meat, very popular in South Africa and Namibia as well. I'm not a big fan of biltong so I didn't even try it, but Jirka did and didn't like it. And as they make it also from springbok meat, every time we saw a springbok, since then, someone said "Look, biltong!" Very funny, isn't it? :)

And we saw some wildlife on the way to the campsite - ostriches, springboks, kudus, antilopes... But no big five, no elephants... It was good anyway, the beginnings are like this: you're excited when you see a springbok. Then you see one thousand of them and you just don't care anymore... This happens with zebras and giraffes too. However, elephants have their spirit and you kind of enjoy them always, but you just don't want to take pictures of them anymore. :) But that all I learned only later, the Day 4 was still far away from the game drives that were going to happen.

Ok, what else... Not according to the plan, but we stopped at a place where cheeatahs and leopards are held in captivity. It isn't really like a zoo, it's just for these cats and the area is much bigger. They're kept there, generally, because they wouldn't be able to survive in the wilderness. And they were actually the only cheetahs and leopards we saw in Africa (it isn't easy to see these cats).

Up: cheetah, right: leopard.

After some more long hours in the truck, we got to the campsite where we pitched the tents on the sand (well, it really always makes sense, on a place like this, to take a shower to get rid of the sand :)). Then we got back on the truck and drove to Sesriem Canyon to watch the sunset. It wasn't as good as the previous day but it was good enough.

The Sesriem Canyon

And that was it. I think the next step was driving back to the camp where Wessel already prepared another of his wonderful meals for us and with full stomachs, we went to the tents to get some good-night sandy sleep.