Cheetah
The sightings book came up trumps again. The book at Namutoni camp (furthest east, and we didn’t stay there but stopped off to check the book and spot for banded mongooses) showed two or three sightings of cheetah in the past few weeks in an area north of the camp near Klein Okavi waterhole. So that’s where we decided to cruise around relentlessly this morning. First we went a bit further up the road to check on the lion with a dead giraffe we had found yesterday afternoon. Astonishingly the lion was still all on his own and the giraffe about the same – somehow throughout the whole night no other lions or hyenas had found out about the kill. Or this mean ol’ grizzled lion had chased them all off!
Anyway, two hours of cruising and we hadn’t seen anything else. I said we might as well head off, at least we gave it a good try. Maureen said: “oh! Cheetahs!” and there were two of them just heading towards a thicket off the road. They settled down in the long grass and we watched them for a few minutes, and unlike our leopard yesterday we soon attracted another half a dozen cars and trucks.
Posh tent!
Last night we stayed at a bush camp called Mushara which lies just outside the national park. The contrast in the quality of accommodation couldn’t have been starker. Charming grown-up tent, candlelit dinner under the stars, good bottle of wine, friendly staff, comfortable bed, and even Maureen’s holy triumvirate: a full length mirror, that you can step right up to for doing contact lenses, with a socket nearby for a hairdryer! Of course, the flipside is that you are outside Etosha and have to be waiting at the gate at 6:20am if you want to catch the best wildlife.
Band of banded mongooses
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