It's a Long Bumpy Road to Zimbabwe - Part 2

Our stop in the chilly, foggy, coastal town of Swakopmund complete, we loaded up and headed out again, first north along the coast, then turning east back into the hot interior of Namibia. Along the way, we saw a small portion of the infamous "Skeleton Coast," a feared region of rocks and reef made all the more difficult by pervasive fog. Many a ship has stayed longer than they had planned along this coast.

Just another ship on the Skeleton Coast that had a bad day.

Rumbling inland, we stopped at some prehistoric petroglyphs from a long-vanished culture about which little is known.

The most interesting petroglyph is next to Tim's hat - an African penguin

After a few days, we arrived at Etosha National Park. This gigantic 8,600 square mile park is home to an array of wildlife well suited to its arid environs. We spent a hot but fun few days roaming around inside the park and seeing what we could see, including a lucky spotting of an African Wild Cat and a honey badger.

Our first evening, we went over to the boy's cabin to get them for dinner and found this Kudu bull grazing outside the door. Carol had to go around the back and climb over their balcony to let them know it was dinner time (for them and for the Kudu).

African wild cat, about 2x a house cat.

The elusive honey badger.

As evening approached, Neil decided to seek out the ever elusive "WiFi" while Carol and Tim sought out showers. It seemed a wise choice, but I decided to sit and watch the water hole outside of camp at dusk (why relax when you can sweat and swat mosquitoes?). About 400 yards away, I spotted a patch of grey hide slipping between some brush that looked like a kudu. I continued to watch and a couple of minutes later spotted the unmistakable shape of a lioness following. The kudu must have given her the slip, but her luck wasn't out yet. Across the plain, a small band of zebra blundered towards where she was hidden in the brush. I watched as they abruptly came to a halt, whinnied, began to panic, and bolted in reverse. Slowly, the lioness strolled out of the brush seemingly empty-pawed. It seemed she had finally come up empty, but what I didn't realize was that she had actually flushed them directly into the waiting jaws of the rest of the pride, who had managed to take one down. For the next hour, there was a great deal of ruckus and roaring as they tore their dinner apart and defended it from hyenas. I decided not to go for a stroll through the bush that evening. Too many sharp pointy teeth roaming about.

Run for it Horace!

Too late. Dinner time.

That bloody spectacle complete, we proceeded through Namibia's Caprivi Strip and into Botswana to Maun. From there, we left our overland truck (which up until now we had thought of as not terribly comfortable) and got into open-air trucks for a 5-hour drive over rough roads being blasted by hot air until we got to our camp in the Okavango Delta. This lush oasis is thick with wildlife of all kinds, and while we were lucky to see them all, perhaps the luckiest was a pack of African Painted Dogs, which are down to just a few thousand left in the wild.

Neil's hair after 5 hours in an open jeep at highway speed.

The elusive painted dog.

The final stop was in Chobe National Park, where we saw more gore of the "lions tearing apart dinner" variety, as well as a leopard which had been forced up a tree to avoid the lions. I guess it pays to be king of the jungle. On that note, we popped across the Zambezi River and into Zimbabwe, bringing this phase of our journey to a close. We were sad to part with the many great people we had gotten to know in our three weeks rattling across southern Africa, but at the same time, it was nice to settle down long enough to shake the dust of the road from our clothes and sleep in for a day or two.

Notable Quotables from part deux:

Tim: You kneed me in the face! Neil: No, you faced me in the knee!

Editor's note: Many of the great pictures in this post were taken by Neil and Tim.