Namibia day 14 - Okonjima

We had a storm last night and this morning was slightly cooler, a change from the oppressive heat we have experienced so far. We had our last delicious breakfast - a berry smoothie and buckwheat pancakes for me - before saying goodbye to the wonderful staff at Onguma. It has been a great stay despite the frustrations of the lack of WiFi and the problems with the hot and cold water - the shower runs hot then turns freezing cold and eventually became hot again. 

We left by 8.30am to head south to our final destination, Okonjima. Okonjima is a reserve known for its leopard tracking, brown hyena and pangolin and also The Africat Foundation which is a conservation programme for cheetah. The vet work here is very exciting, it would be a great placement for Inca! The leopards are collared and tracked for research purposes.

As we left Onguma we had about 10 giraffe walking down the road, it was a great farewell. We saw a completely different landscape as we left the Etosha region, and near Tsumeb we drove through the Karstveld which is a beautiful area of densely wooded hills so everything was very green, and there were baboons on the side of the road. Further south we passed many trucks from Zambia laden with sheets of copper, on their way to Walvis Bay where the copper is exported to China. 

We passed through Otjiwarongo, another typical Namibian town with very wide streets and low buildings. 

We then arrived at Okonjima, had lunch and settled into our rooms. Thankfully there is good WiFi here and Tommy was able to do his tutoring session with his student. We went on the sundowner game drive which was a leopard tracking drive. The ranger uses a telemetry device to try and track the leopards who are wearing collars - not all of them are. Despite picking up a signal it was impossible to find them as the vegetation here is very deep thicket in most areas, so while we were near we could not see them. We managed to see a mother and baby giraffe which was a great sighting (see extra) and also saw eland which are the largest antelope. I was delighted to see the pretty Hartman's zebra, they differ from the common Burchell's zebra by having stripes all the way down their legs and their stripes are more solid (see extra).

Going off road in a last desperate attempt to find the elusive leopard, as the sun was starting to go down, we got a puncture in the large 4x4 vehicle. The ranger managed to change the tyre in no time at all, it was impressive to see him jacking up this huge vehicle (5 rows of 3 seats) and quickly get the tyre changed. By now we had given up on seeing leopard but then he got a message to say some had been spotted nearby - we drove there very quickly and saw two leopards, a father and son. This had to be my main blip although by now it was getting dark so I was rather pleased with how this came out at ISO 25600!

An early start tomorrow for an 'endangered species' game drive. This reserve has pangolin, brown hyena and aardwolf but not sure we will get to see any of those.