Once we had left Botswana it was off into Namibia to see Etosha, the Namib Desert, the Skeleton Coast, Cape Cross and a whole heap more.
We started off by swimming in a freezing cold quarry before arriving at Etosha National Park. It's so easy to see wildlife in Etosha you literally don't have to leave the campsite. Man made waterholes are placed by the site as an oasis for wildlife and as a chance for tourists to see the animals up close.
Here we saw everything, elephants, lions, zebras, gazelle, giraffes, hyenas, jackals and quite a few rare black rhino. During the day it could all be seen in abundance but the magic really happened at night. We we're lucky enough to witness two male black rhino sparring right in front of us. This was brilliant to watch. The rhinos were huge but you get a sense of how big the elephants are when they're twice the size of the rhino. The elephants bullied the rhino quite a bit that night which I never really imagined before then.
A herd of elephant then arrived and took over the waterhole for a while, stamping their authority. The youngsters were adorable playing in the water, although I didn't like the pungent smell they left behind much.
Lions could be seen stalking the gazelle, while in the campsite jackals could be found raiding tents and screaming an eerie sound in the blackness.
It was here where we witnessed a dust devil, a small desert tornado as it got closer and closer before making its way right over us. We were a bit dusty afterwards.
After Etosha we travelled to spend the night in Spitzkoppe, a unique landscape of rock arches and caves. The rocks glowed red at sunset similar to Uluru and Kata Tjuta. I found an animal here I grew a fondness of in the Serengeti called the hyrax. A small guinea pig-like creature that sits atop the huge boulders in the sun.
After Spitzkoppe it was across the harsh terrain of the Skeleton Coast and the Tropic of Capricorn. This was an incredibly dry and rocky place where we only found cactuses and large cat prints in the sand. We were heading to see the seals at Cape Cross seal colony.
The smell at Cape Cross is quite bad and my flip flops had to be thrown away afterwards. This is due to the vast seal colony that calls it home. They can be seen frolicking in the water but mainly sleeping in the sun, as I'm sure I would be if I was a seal. The waves we're very powerful here as they slammed across the rocks and jackals were sniffing around for injured youngsters, so not too relaxing for the seals.
We saw Windhoek and ate some unusual meat there, like zebra and gemsbok before heading to Swakopmund. This town seemed a bit confused on what it was. It seemed to me as if Legoland Austria had accidently set up in the desert. This was our new adventure playground for a few days.
We went quad-biking the first morning which was the most fun I've ever had. A drive through the seemingly endless desert where you could go as fast as the bike could take you, brilliant! We also went sand-boarding. We did two different kinds, the kind with a snowboard and the kind with a bendy bit of wood where you fly down the sand dune on your belly with your chin just above the sand. Both were a great laugh and just the break we needed from safari for a short while.
Swakopmund was also our first glimpse of normal shopping since arriving in Africa. It was a lot safer here and you could go for a coffee and walk around with a lot more ease than further east.
Our next stop was something I couldn't wait to see for the whole journey, the Sossusvlei. This place was very unique in that it homed trees that had been dead for centuries, blistered by the sun till they were black but still standing due to the high sand dunes around them protecting them from the wind. The floor was cracked and dry, the sand dunes encroaching were silky soft though and vibrantly red.
Here we saw a small lizard that when threatened detached it's tail and ran off while a small brain in the tail made it wriggle like a worm. A bizarre thing to see but very convincing to the large birds around.
The next morning we set off at dawn to watch the sun rise over the Namib-Naukluft National Park from the top of one of the highest sand dunes in the world. It was very tiring reaching the top as for every two steps you took you seemed to sink a step which was quite disheartening at the time. It was all worth it as the sun rose though, turning the stunning desert from dark blue to fiery orange within minutes.
When it's time to leave though you get to run, roll or dive down the side of the dune as fast you can which makes the struggle up all that more worthwhile.
We headed further south to watch the sunset over the second biggest canyon in the world, the Fish River Canyon. Similar to the Grand Canyon though not as big, it is the remnants of a much larger river that carved its way into the land. Yet another wonderful sunset in Africa.
The next day it was off to see South Africa.