I do wonder, though, what goes on in the mind of animals when they visit the rest camp waterholes. Whenever they arrive for a drink, there are always these weird silent creatures up in the koppie just staring, with the occasional flashing lights. It would totally freak me out. I suppose they're used to it by now because when a huge herd of elephants paraded in last night (kev counted 18 of them), they didn't give us a second glance. Yet, I doubt they trust us considering that they sent two scouts in first to make sure it was safe (exactly what a herd with three cute little dumbos wants).
The rhinos, on the other hand, do find the whole setup a bit spooky, I think, because they tend to stand motionless for ages, just listening and staring back. Maybe that's normal rhino behaviour, but they didn't seem comfortable to me. The bachelor and his hyena drinking buddy returned twice last night. They make such an odd couple ('the weirdest herd I've ever seen,' as Sid the Sloth from Ice Age would say) that you wonder what benefit there is in their relationship? Maybe the rhino offers the hyena protection and chases predators away from their kills, giving the scavenger something to chew on - exactly what a hyena wants. Ha, I can do this amateur animal psychology thing too!
One thing that doesn't take a lot of imagination is working out what's going on in the mind of the drunken afrikaaner. At dinner, a table of them were loudly regaling each other with tales of sexual exploits, apparently assuming no one could understand their slurred afrikaans. Later, during the lag between the elephant and rhino arrivals, the group of them noisily showed up to find not much going on. Luckily, the groot man waved his hand dismissively and yelled 'man, there's bladdie fokkol going on here,' and turned to leave, with other men trailing and the women cackling behind him. Kev reckons they were all heading off to one cabin, which actually wouldn't surprise me either.
They must've felt their stupidity very acutely this morning because we didn't spot them at breakfast, where we were served the usual buffet. Too busy pouring over the map and reading the travel log in the blue file of awesomeness, I only dished up a few sliced tomatoes that I added a bit of tobasco to. After a few bites, I thought 'wow, that's good,' so I dished up another plate as well. Horrified, Kev has vowed not to visit me in hospital if I develop kidney stones. I, however, let the old wives lose sleep over things like that...
Having packed up camp rather quickly (it's a lot easier to pull down than put up), we got off to an early start. The nice thing about camping in winter is that, while everything may need a good dusting, nothing gets wet and muddy. On the drive to Namutoni, where we decided to fill up (and I secretly got some wooden hair pins at the curio shop), we passed two little steenbokkies that were grazing along the road. They clearly valued safety over sateity, hightailing it into the bush as we came speeding along in our now-grey double cab. Actually, Kev's been sticking to the speed limit of 60km/h, it just feels really fast on a bumpy dirt road. It felt painfully slow, however, on the tarred roads between Namutoni and Von Lindequist Gate, where we've finally left our sandy tracks behind us for good (the road from here on will be paved). At the gate, we thought we'd been ripped off because the lady charged us R650 before she'd open the boom, but she couldn't give us a receipt. As we we whisked past three warthogs having breakfast beyond the park borders, Kev made me phone the Namibia Wildlife Resorts' head office to check, and it turned out the fee was legitimate. We were supposed to have paid it at the reception when we checked in. Considering there's no record of us having given anyone the money, I think it's the Etosha National Park that got ripped off instead of us. But that's what happens when you're too apathetic to correct an inefficient system. This is a classic example of African psychology - getting a nice bonus for doing pretty much nothing... exactly what every official wants.
