The bus had to brake suddenly a couple of times on the journey from Spitzkoppe to Etosha - for a cow and a lizard crossing the road!

Just before we arrived at Etosha, we stopped at town of Outjo to pick up some snacks. Along the roadside in the town there were some people from the Himba tribe - they traditionally don't wash after they reach puberty (so they smell pretty bad!), they cover their bodies in a reddy/orange powder which acts as a sunscreen and they coat their hair in mud and shape it into dreadlocks. It was a bit sad - they just sat around waiting for tourists to come along and pay them to pose for a photo, I felt weird about it so didn't take a picture of them.

Etosha National park covers 20,000 sq km (it was originally over 99,000 sq km but was cut down over the years). Just after we entered the park we saw some lions shading under a tree - amazing! I think we were very lucky to see them.

We spent our first night in the Okaukuejo campsite - it has a very nice swimming pool but we didn't have time to use it. Driving around there we saw zebras, wildebeest, springbok, jackals, a hawk (specifically, a southern pale chanting goshawk), a bat-eared fox with two babies, giraffe, oryx, guinea fowl and more sociable weavers' nests in the trees. It was so exciting to see wild animals in their natural habitat.

Back at the campsite I climbed the 'Rapunzel's Tower' building to watch the sunset and then we had a tasty dinner of springbok-leg stew. After dark we went to the floodlit watering hole and saw a black rhino come for a drink - apparently they are shy animals and usually only come out at night.

The next day we drove on to the Halali camp for lunch, where we could relax by the pool for a little while before driving on to the Namutoni camp to pitch our tents for the second night in Etosha. Along the way we saw springbok, zebras (lots, plus a big group of zebras and springbok drinking together at a puddle in the road), oryx, a flamingo, impala, bush buck (a tiny antelope that moves very quickly so I couldn't take a photo of it), giraffe (lots, some grazing together with zebras and antelope), warthogs, ostriches and more guinea fowl and other small birds and big birds (bustards). On two occasions we saw antelope fighting, which was intriguing to watch. We also had some beautiful skies - interesting clouds and strong colours.

Namutoni is the most developed and well-equipped of the three campsites in the park but there were SO MANY INSECTS there - flies, beetles and ants swarming absolutely everywhere. Again there was a beautiful pool but no time to use it. I went to 'The Fort' to watch sunset - it's an old German building (though it looks more Arabic than European in style), beautifully lit up with flaming torches, candles and a big burner in the centre with elephant designs cut out of the sides so the image was illuminated by the flames inside.

We had delicious pork and peaches with couscous for dinner after which I went to the waterhole for a while but didn't see anything - it started raining (and it had been raining a lot over the previous few days) and when that happens the animals don't need to come to the waterhole to drink because there are puddles everywhere.