So, it's back to animal spotting again folks...
....but before we get to that, we take a detour to see the largest known meteorite....50 tons of Iron-Nickel alloy. Dated to be around 80,000 years old....that's, er, quite a long time ago. Given my physics background, I get quite a buzz from touching this alien lump of metal. Probably because there's thunder about.
...back to the Park..and animals... This time we're in the Etosha National Park which encompasses a huge salt-pan....(Etosha = 'large white place')....the remains of a lake long evaporated. We stay in two different lodges, each with its own Namibian (slightly off-hand) character as we animal spot, motoring around the unsufaced corrugated roads, shaking our motorhomes to bits. The wildlife is great though, although we seem to have missed the opportunity to see a leopard in the wild. On the last day we see the awful but fascinating sight of jackals, hyenas and vultures devouring a rotting elephant carcass. We also see two of the rare black rhino at our lodge campsite waterhole. Impressive stuff indeed.
The salt pan is just amazingly odd... a massive totally flat area, baking in the hot, hot sun...
..... talking of hotness, it's got up to 39 degrees C on Charles' dashboard readout, which makes the fact that a cable rubs its way through an air conditioning pipe with a puff of escaping gas more than slightly annoying. This has a drastic effect on the ability of Charles to keep us cool of course. It's kaput, broken... damn. I couldn't even get out to see what happened without being eaten, either. Design fault, Iveco!
....That's not all either; we discover that our amazing Mr Fix-it' s camper burst into flames in the night, slightly burning him, but not too seriously, thank goodness... and he's off sorting a replacement.
........
Anyway, here we are now, camped just outside the park. Mr Fix'-it is back but can't do much for another three days as we need aluminium arc-welding gear. Hey oh.
80,000 years old...
Design fault Mr Iveco!
Interesting terrain and things to see ahead, it seems, and we are to be allowed to travel on a 'D' road, which means rough, I think. This is Good News because we can see some 'not-to-be-missed' sights. Hot stuff.
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