Attack of the crickets....

On the truck ( it's a bus, but the crew appear tetchy if you call it that) we have a seat rotation system in place. The idea being that everyone gets a combination of the smooth front window seats, and the bottom jarring back seats. On our journey to Etosha National Park in the North of the country Em and I were in the worst seats on the bus. Backwards facing with minimal leg room. I swallowed my travel sickness pill and hoped for the best. 5 hours later we arrived. No signs of vomit.

Etosha is meant to be one of Africa's finest parks - black faced impala, black and white rhino's were some of their rarer species. We stopped for a group photo in front of the bus/truck - I picked the worst person to take mine - he instantly dropped mine down into the red African dirt. Bugger.

Anyway other people's pictures looked lovely.....

Off into the park we headed, still facing backwards and in scorchio temperatures. Springbok was our first spot, followed by some warthog. 30 minutes or so later the beast I'd been waiting for presented itself. A pride of 4 lions, eating the zebra carcas under the cover of an Acacia tree. We watched them for a good 20 minutes - very, very exciting. The big male's are next on our wish list. The rest of the afternoon we saw giraffe, an elephant, and lots and lots of antelope.

Hot and sweaty we hit the campsite pool - heaven. The boys got the beers in, and I tried to relive the days when I could swim metres and metres underwater. I think I need to accept that was a long time ago - I couldn't even do a width. Once we'd annoyed pretty much all the other pool guests we left and after dinner made our way to the watering hole. The campsites here are truly amazing, we get to use the same facilities as the $500 lodges - including this magnificent viewing spot over the watering hole. We took our wine down - a huge male Rhino was there within 15 metres of us. Amazing. A few of us decided to sleep in a raised platform which told us we entered at our own risk. As I lay there in my sleeping bag trying to stop swarms of crickets getting into my mouth, mossies eat my forehead I decided that the animals would have to wait til the morning. I had a tent to get back to.

It's just a shame the crickets followed me there........