I'm not sure yet exactly what the plan is for tomorrow, but before I leave Namibia, let me post today's pictures. First, a few shots of downtown Windhoek. It's really a pretty Western looking city, and you can see the German influence and presence clearly — there are more BMWs on the street here than I've seen in some time!
After lunch we went out to a ranch perhaps twenty minutes outside of town and took a drive across it. For starters we saw plenty of nice rolling landscape full of antelope of various sorts and lots of warthogs (although they're not easy to get a picture of; the third one in this set below is an example).
Most of the antelope (I hope I'm not using the wrong term) were in small groups, but sometimes we'd come across huge herds of several hundred at a time.
Now, I've seen — and eaten — plenty of deer in my life, so those weren't really all that exciting. However, at the far end of the ranch we saw four rhinoceroses coming toward us! I don't know if we were skirting with danger, but they seemed really docile and milled around us (within a few feet) for about twenty minutes. It was a family group with parents, a young child (a year and a half or so — you can see it in the middle of the center photo below), as well as an older one.
Not long after that we came upon a large herd (perhaps forty or fifty in all) of giraffes eating away at the trees and foliage.
After the drive across the ranch, Rachel and I decided to go and see a nearby lion feeding as well. After a short drive and hike we made it to a large wall and surrounding cage with slots about four feet by one foot knocked through it — meat, attached to a chain, was tossed over this wall and a minute later we heard the deep rumble of approaching lions. The male dragged the meat out to the women, who immediate forbid him from eating it and consumed it, as he occasionally tried to lick it, earning a swat in the face. Eventually he decided it would make more sense to have a nap.
We drove home as the sun was starting to set, and are now (as I write this, not as I post it) heading out for supper. We're both very tired and not entirely looking forward to tomorrow's time in the air.
As a point of trivia, most of the tourists here appear to be German, and many services are in German, so my ability to understand (if not speak) is quite useful and it's coming back very quickly. As a second point of trivia, people here seem
really freaked out by escalators, pausing for a long time at the top and then making a nervous hop onto a step they perceive of as “safe” — that's not just locals, but tourists alike. It's very odd.
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