-----Teaching in Namibia-----: Up North: Friday...Etosha National Park

Friday was the day of second in a lifetime and once in a life time experiences. The second in a lifetime experience was the game drive (safari). Like I had posted before when we did the first game drive. This time, we did a self driven (or in our case taxi cab driver driven) game drive. We went to Etosha National Park which is over 22, 000 sq kms and has about 150 different species of animals and over 400 different species of birds. There are dirt roads that drivers travel on throughout the park and there are many rules that visitor must follow for their safety such as don't get out of your vehicle and don't drive off the road. There are little camps periodically throughout the park where visitors can get food, gas, use the bathroom, or stay overnight.

On this particular day we got up at 5 am and had to be driving out of the bush camp at 6:30 am. This was Uanee's idea because he wanted us to be able to see as many animals as possible. I will let the pictures below and their captions explain most of the animals we saw, but I will share with you all the incredible story of how we were within 10 feet of a pride of lions.

So halfway through the day we stopped at one of the camps to have lunch and get some stretching time outside of the van. There was a watering hole for viewing animals at the camp. Some of our group wandered down to see if they could see any wildlife there. They didn't find much of anything we hadn't seen before, but they did talk to a lady who told them that she had seen some lions and an elephant at a different watering hole just down the road a few minutes prior. In excitement of what we might see (many of the girls were very anxious to see wild cats, and I really wanted to see an elephant) we packed up our stuff quickly and loaded into the van. Then, Uanee pulled the van into the gas station just around the corner and to our sadness, he decided it was time to repair the leaky tire on our luggage trailer we had been pulling the whole trip.

We thought our dreams of seeing these animals were dwindling away, but little did we know our opportunity was growing. As I have mentioned before, Uanee knows A LOT of people. So, he happened to know a man who was at the gas station who just happened to be a game warden (sorta like a park ranger) who agreed to take us to where he knew the lions typically hung out. On our way to following this warden, we saw signs of an elephant who may have been present a mere 5 minutes prior. This made me sad because I just really wanted to see an elephant in the wild walking around. But, the experience I was about to have was far more exciting. We pulled up to an open field and saw the lions in the distance, at least a good 300 feet from the main road. There was a car pulled over looking at them.

We thought it was really cool to have found these lions (6 of them, a mom, dad, teenage son, a young girl, and two other females). Then things got crazy. Uanee said that his friend was going to take all of us in the back of his little pickup truck (which had a canopy top on it) and drive us out to the pride of lions. We thought this was so awesome so we gathered our cameras, and squeezed 11 girls (2 professors and 9 students) into the back of the tiny pickup and away we went. The warden stopped and told the people who were on the side of the road that he was a warden and that they were not to follow him. Then, we set out into the field. The guy drove us right into the middle of he pride. We had the big daddy lion on one side of us and the other five on the opposite side. We just sat for a long while taking pictures and taking in the scene. After a while, one lion began to walk towards the truck, so the guy moved us around the other side toward the male lion. He bucked the car to see if he could get the lion to respond and he did. He stood up and roared and then walked around right in front of us. It was the most incredible thing.

We ended the day still in disbelief at what we had experienced and enjoyed an amazing sunset. Glory!

Wildebeest