A LEAP OF LEOPARDS
OR
THE ADVENTURES of FRANK AND PETE
NAMIBIA!
It’s a bit like Shropshire really: not as famous as its neighbours, South Africa, Botswana and Angola, but a secret paradise for those in the know. Maybe we should keep it a secret.
Nah! Because then I’d have to give up on this blog before I start. Though I’m seriously doubting my ability to paint, with words, the beauty of the ever-changing landscape…
from desert...
to coast...
to salt pan...
moonscape mountains...
Canyons and...
Savanna
Luckily, I have photos! Thanks to Shaun and our wonderful photographic guide, Jandré. Though, to be honest, most of the photos in this blog are from my phone. You will be able to tell the difference!
Shaun met Jandré back in November on his first solo trip to Namibia. Jandré is a professional wildlife and landscape photographer whose business is photography safaris. He and Shaun became such firm friends that Jandré invited us to his wedding in Swakopmund, where we started our amazing trip in April.
It was a beach wedding, but I won’t bore you with endless photos as you don’t know the couple. The bride looked gorgeous,
and everyone had a wonderful, though rather chilly, time. Don’t let this photo of me in the marquee deceive you. I only removed my wrap for the camera!
The day after the wedding, Kristina, our erstwhile Belarusian ward, now a grown woman with a child of her own, joined us (minus child!).
And the day after that, we loaded everything into Jandré’s custom-built jeep, and off the four of us went. Yes, Jandré left his new bride to take us on a three-week safari! We’d have been delighted had she come with us, but she confided to me she was looking forward to some peace after the hectic months of run-up to the wedding. I can understand that!
ENTER FRANK!
Frank was born when Jandré hit the windscreen on his wedding night to squish a mozzie. He hadn’t got used to a ring on his left hand! Frank became very dear to us as we watched him grow a little each day. We encouraged him by never forgetting to say good morning and include him in our frivolous banter.
Our first lodge was on a reserve called Okonjima. The owners had upgraded us to the private villa as a wedding gift to Jandré, and that set the tone for the rest of the trip: stunning properties, incredible service and amazing food that just got better and better as we progressed.
On the very first night, on the very first drive, at Okonjima, I realised a dream: I saw my first leopard! I’ve never seen any on previous safaris, so it was one of the goals for this trip. Mawezeni is the biggest leopard in the reserve and wow, she was impressive.
ON THE DRIVE HOME, WE MET PETE!
Pete is (I hope not was) a scrub hare, and we called him Pete because he had the looks and cheekiness of Peter Rabbit. He appeared every evening, zigzagging along in front of the lights of the jeep. We were sorry to say goodbye to Pete at the end of our stay.
The first evening in Okonjima delivered another first for us:
porcupines snuffling around in the long grass just under the veranda.
But the second evening proved even more exciting when we stumbled across Mawezeni’s son, a young leopard, yet to be named.
I called him Sundance, because he was dancing in the sun which, in turn, was dancing on his fur. We stayed with him for about three hours,
watching him snooze,
watching him wake up,
and watching him head on to the Zen Garden (a picturesque rocky outlook), looking for fun on the way.
I think he only liked us! Because a couple of hours into the sighting, another jeep turned up and Sundance disappeared into the bush.
The next day we found his father, Neo, who had been avoiding us previously.
Three leopards in three days! I was ecstatic.
During our three days at Okonjima, we saw many antelope,
Zebra
and giraffes, but the highlight was the leopards.
The journey to our next port of call took us around the vast salt pan on the Etosha plane. The Etosha National Park spans an area of 8,600 miles (I believe that’s bigger than Scotland and Belgium put together, but don’t quote me on that) and the pan makes up 23% of it. We were staying at a private reserve on the eastern border called Onguma.
And if the Villa impressed me, our accommodation at Onguma, Camp Kala, blew me away! The lodge was only 7 months old and comprised four ‘rooms’. Each one… oh, why don’t I just post a photo!
(It was while staying here that I discovered a remedy for headache/migraine attacks. I’m not going to bore you with that. If you would like to know more, click here.)
At Onguma we had another driver/guide with us called Johan, a great young man, enthusiastic, helpful, and interesting, who stayed with us for the six days – four at Camp Kala and two at another lodge on the reserve, The Fort.
Johan’s enthusiasm bubbled over when, on every drive, we saw animals he had struggled to see with other guests in the time he had been at Onguma.
On the very first drive, on the very first evening (intentional repetition there), we caught up with a pride of 9 lions on the move.
We followed them to the water hole and stayed with them as long as we could. Sundowners (drinks and snacks provided every evening while out in the bush at sundown) were forgotten as we watched and listened to the lionesses drinking and playing.
Someone back home asked me if the reserves feed the animals to tame them enough for us to get close to them. I can assure you they are totally wild, and they fend for themselves. They have had years to learn that the jeeps are not a threat. As long as you don’t break the outline of the vehicle by sticking out an arm or a leg, or, even more stupidly, by getting out, they have yet to realise that these hard, weird sounding beings are actually meals on wheels.
It had been a long drive to Etosha (Onguma) so imagine our delight when, on the way back to the lodge that evening, Pete popped up in the spotlight from the jeep. He’d made it!
Sadly, we had to leave Camp Kala after four nights, as they had other bookings. As it was, we got one night extra than originally planned, because we loved it so much. Not only was the accommodation 5+ stars, but we had also grown very fond of our ‘butler’ Ivaza, who seemed to anticipate our every need and remembered every one of our personal preferences. He didn’t only look after us at the lodge,
he also put on a fabulous sundowner in a special place and an evening in the boma – traditionally a stockade, now used in many lodges as a place for guests to have dinner, often a bbq, round a campfire.
On the last night we found wildebeast (or a Gnu), harassing two cheetahs. I commented it would make a fabulous photo if the cheetahs went up a nearby tree. “Cheetahs don’t climb trees,” Jandré explained…
Don’t you just love it when animals prove you wrong?
Pete visited us every evening. Even after we changed lodges to The Fort, a lodge built in the Moroccan style with a view over the pan and another water hole. It was lovely and, had we gone there first, we would have been delighted with it. But we missed Ivaza and our privacy at Camp Kala, where we were the only residents for three of our four nights.
But Johan and Jandré made our stay at The Fort extra special and arranged a fabulous lunch in the wine cellar. And we still had Johan driving us in the Onguma reserve every evening. In the mornings, we went into the Etosha National Park in Jandré’s jeep. He was fond of driving it with his foot while scouting for wildlife.
We saw many lions at Etosha, including a few young males,
but we were eager to see a fully grown male. Shaun and I had had the privilege in South Africa a few years ago and I had taken a video of that one doing a magnificent roar. But I lost the video (sad face). So I was keen to recapture a similar moment. Johan explained no one had seen Scarface, one of the local lions, for a few weeks, not even on the camera traps, so he was doubtful we would be successful. Well, we were having dinner on the terrace (overlooking the pan and the waterhole, remember?) when who should saunter in from stage right but Scarface. He had a long drink, then lay down to call his lionesses. Sadly, it was too dark to get a good photo. And there was too much chatter amongst the other guests to get a recording of his roar. But if you look closely, you can just make him out.
At the end of our two nights at The Fort, Kristina left for Belarus and Shaun and I continued our journey by helicopter, saying goodbye to the land cruiser and Frank, who was to be collected by a driver and driven back home. We also said goodbye to Pete. He certainly couldn’t follow a helicopter.
I mean, whoever saw a flying hare?
I was nervous about the two-hour flight. Correction (as I explained to Kirt, our pilot) I wasn’t nervous about the flight; I was nervous about coming down unexpectedly. I needn’t have been. He was an amazing pilot and a great guy.
Imagine landing to refuel by a main road! A chap with barrels of fuel loaded on his truck met us and we stood to the side while they filled up.
We arrived at Hoanib, in the Namib desert, in temperatures of 39° c. The floor was so hot in our tented accommodation (that’s a tent!) it felt like there was underfloor heating, and we so wished we could turn it off.
We had stayed at this lodge in 2016, so I was eager to see if the pack of lions we had seen then, including 3 cubs, were still around. We have a gorgeous photo of one, taken by Shaun, on our wall at home and I wanted to see him/her grown up.
Well, I wasn’t disappointed in one way: ‘Charlie’, who was definitely one of ‘our’ cubs, had just killed a giraffe and had holed up under a bush to eat it. We had no trouble finding her and spending many a happy hour keeping her company.
But sadly, Charlie has been reigning in the territory alone since 2021. Her mother and aunt (the two lionesses we had seen in 2016) had died, and her two sisters had caught the last train to the coast where they had cubs of their own and would not socialise with Charlie for the cubs’ safety. I truly believe Charlie enjoyed the company of the jeeps and we were happy to just ‘hang’ with her for many hours. Hopefully, this season, a male lion will wander by and give her a litter of her own.
And would you believe it? There to greet us, on the first evening drive, was Pete! Talk about Super Hare.
Did he acquire rotary blades? Or did he stow away?
One activity at this lodge is a drive to the Skeleton Coast (about four hours) and a flight back. We had done it last time. But this time we had Jandré! And he knew of a beautiful oasis that no one else went to. We visited it on our way and could have stayed there forever!
But lunch awaited
and then the ten-minute flight back. The pilot asked for a volunteer to sit in the co-pilot’s seat…
I waited, politely, for a good two seconds to give everyone a chance. No one spoke, so I put up my hand. It was fun, but the pilot wasn’t terribly friendly, so it was a silent ride.
Kirk flew us out of Hoanib in the helicopter after our three night stay, and we had fun landing on the top of one of these flat hills and wondering if anyone else had ever set foot there.
We hadn’t seen many elephants in the other places: a few, but certainly none at Hoanib. They had all wandered afar to find water. But at our last destination, Onduli, we had a wonderful morning following a small group until they caught up with the rest of the herd of about twenty elephants at a watering hole. The watering hole was busy with other jeeps, but we had spent a magical hour or more alone with our five as we followed them along the dried-up river bed, whilst discussing collective nouns… a tower of giraffe, a dazzle of zebra, a business of mongoose (we saw those too!) and…?
Saturday night at Onduli is pizza night! Which we especially enjoyed because it’s (homemade) pizza night at home too. At Onduli, they made the pizzas in the outdoor oven in the boma where we sat to eat them.
SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU ARE OPHIDIOPHOBIC (Phippy) SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH. However, there are no photos, so you may be OK.
We entered the boma at about 7 pm and our server, Kallie, was just pushing in my seat when he suddenly leapt away to the other side of the area in a panic. I realised that there must be something there, but as he was babbling in Afrikaans, I didn’t know what. Now, those of you who know me know that my greatest fear is spiders, so that was my first thought. I froze, apart from instinctively raising my feet off the ground (mainly because Kallie was staring wide-eyed and flapping his hand in that direction).
Jandré, also on the other side of the table, calmly told to raise my feet (already done) and to keep still. I was the only one sitting at the table. Everyone else was safely on the opposite side. And they were arguing. Kallie looked like he was about to pass out, Kirk was frowning and insisting something to Jandré who was clearly disagreeing.
I think my voice was a little shaky when I begged to know what it was.
“It’s just a pygmi python snake,” Jandré assured me. “It’s not poisonous.” I sighed with relief. Once I knew it wasn’t poisonous, I was fine. I don’t mind snakes (when they’re harmless) and I was happy to look down and watch this two-foot-long reptile slither to safety through the wall of the boma. He was probably feeling somewhat aggrieved as Kallie had stepped on him. And Kallie had panicked because he thought it was a highly poisonous zebra snake.
Shaun then appeared, having missed all the excitement because he’d gone to the loo.
SAFE TO JOIN IN AGAIN!
At Onduli we had the magnificent experience of a ‘star bed’.
The lodge staff pushed our bed to the outer half of our room which was open to the sky. And we slept under the stars,
with bushbabies (hot water bottles) and mosquito control assumed by two geckos (under the bed) and our very own stick insect.
It was magical. In fact, so magical that we opted to do it again the second night when the crash of thunder, and a few light raindrops, rudely awakened us around 1 a.m. For a few minutes we wondered if we should just ignore it but, luckily, caution prevailed and we pushed the bed back under the safety of the roof. Good job too. Minutes later, it rained harder than it had done for the entire rainy season.
The time came for Dirk to fly us back to Windhoek for our last night before our flight home. However, the weather in Windhoek was unsuitable for landing, so we had to detour to a different airstrip where Dirk’s fiancée met us and drove us to Windhoek.
But what about Pete? Did he make it to Onduli?
Well, we didn’t see him, but he must have been there because we saw…
BABY PETE!
During the three week trip, we also saw rhino – black and white. But I can’t post any photos of them, nor tell you where, because if I did, I’d have to kill you! They are heavily protected and let’s keep it that way.
Finally, at Windhoek airport, I went to browse the duty free and discovered why the male lions had been absent at Etosha. They’d obviously been on their hols and were still stocking up:
Namibia is a magical place. We were so lucky in our sightings because, on two drives a day for three weeks we saw awesome animals every time. We met positively wonderful people and ate fantastic food.
But most of all, we saw… a leap of leopards!
