Namibia - 20 April, 2001

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Travel Distance

Total:

36,623 km

15,803 km

Today we will be heading up north towards Etosha National Park.  We are supposed to get an early start but there are a number of developments that get in the way.  First, we had ripped the tarp that covered the stuff put on the roof and the repair job was not quite ready yet.  So we had to wait while they picked that up.

Second, one of the driver's malaria re-occurred, and he needed to be taken to the hospital on an urgent basis.  We therefore lost one of our crew.  Jacqui went downtown shopping, while Lars worked on his computer journal.  Once the truck came back at 10:30 AM, we all helped load everything on it.  All the stuff had been taken off the roof while they were repairing the tarp, so it took some time to re-pack it all.

We were finally ready to leave just before noon - Jacqui came back just in time from her shopping.  We headed out of town and headed north.  What was going to be a rather usual and mundane drive all of a sudden got quite exciting around 1PM.  We were sitting in the front right hand side, when all of a sudden a white object blew right past Lars' face.  At first we thought it was some papers being blown back from the cab - which happens when the windows are open.

But we turn back to some gasps and see flapping in the aisle a black shouldered kite.  It had flown in through the open left hand side cab window and it must have hit something on its way in as it was clearly hurt.  At first it was stunned and just lay there.  Looking into its eyes was eerie - they were blood red, except for the iris, which was jet black and looked so sharp and focused.

As he came to he started to struggle and with those sharp claws and beak - and we could see how sharp they were - he was quite a danger to us.  We grabbed a towel and threw it over him to calm him down.  After a while we found a rest stop on the side of the road where we pulled over and threw him out of the truck.  But he was clearly badly injured - one wing must have been broken.  We were not sure what to do with him - he got very aggressive the moment that we tried to approach him.  After a while we decided to go look for the welders gloves that we carried - the idea was to take him to the other side of the road where he might have a chance as it was wide open fields.  But as we were getting the gloves we heard a loud thud - he had just been run over trying to cross the street.  It was quite sad seeing him go like that, but may have been for the best as he would have likely starved to death.

After having our own lunch, we continue on our way, arriving at the campsite just as the sun was setting.  We were supposed to enter Etosha National Park today, but we were running late and could not enter the park after dark.  After setting up camp, we organised our stuff.  Shortly after dinner, we went to bed.  It was a nice clear night sky, so we decided to do some star gazing from the warmth of our sleeping bags.