So while I was not actually in the Lion King while in Namibia I will say that our bus trip to Etosha National Reserve did sing this song on many occasions so it is somewhat appropriate. To start off we had our first diplomatic briefing while when we landed in Namibia and also enjoyed a performance from a local children's choir when after the meeting. There were maybe 20 young girls that ranged between 5 and 14 years old. They were absolutely amazing and dacned around while they sang. I swear they had about double the attitude of most of the competition dancers I have ever seen, somethign to live up to for me! Once we finally got to get off the bus we drove around Walvis Bay for a little bit to see some of the stores and stuff, after that we stopped in Swakopmund. There we got money and stopped in a grocery store for some chips and food for the long drive. We stopped quite a bit on the drive, which we were told would be about 4 hours beforehand, but another one of the buses had broken down and some girls had to go to the bathroom a lot, so it ended up taking about 8 HOURS!!! Once we got to our camp our guides, George and Milner, fixed dinner which was simply spaghetti with meat sauce, but I have never had such amazing food before. This was partially because it was raining outside and Emily and I had to set up our tent with Milner's help, but overall we were tired enough as is. Surprisingly the bus ride actually didn't seem that long at all. We got to see some of the dunes and local villages as we drove through and stopped in them. It was such a huge change from Morocco, the people were amazingly friendly, and not in a creepy way. They were honestly curious about us, and we were told later that our ship amounts for about 10% of the entire tourists that traveled in Namibia for the entire year!
Our camp was in Okaukuejo and our campsite was ridiculously nice. The bathrooms were immaculate for a campsite and they had various stores you could get necessities and non-essentials as well. They had 2 awesome swimming pools and even small kitchens that we would hang out in while our guides made dinner, often with us offering to help. Our group was quite interesting in that there were 13 girls and 1 boy, I'm pretty sure our guides were just happy we didn't continue to say "AW!" every time we saw an animal. Nevertheless we were a very fun group and very silly indeed. We started our safari when we left the next morning at 6:30 AM, we were the first bus to go out on the first fame drive! We saw a ton of giraffe, zebra, springbok, oryx, and ostrich among others. We came back for breakfast and realized to our great pleasure that the guides had provided us with Nutella, which I think was a godsend to us. I'm pretty sure we finished it by the end of the day. Our second game drive was after breakfast and that was when we saw our major excitement. We found 2 LIONS underneath a tree very close to the road. the crazy part was that they had just finished eating a zebra whose carcass was right next to them. As gross as I normally would find this it was really cool to see this so close. The last game drive we tried finding some cheetah, but there ended up being only 1 bus that actually found them so it wasn't too bad. We got to see a lot of the landscape and this huge watering hole. There were apparently some rhino near a watering hole at our camp but I missed that. We did have jackals that would come into our camp eery night as well, which meant we had to keep our shoes inside the tent so they didn't steal them! The nice thing about dinner on the second night was that our guides made us traditional Namibian food which was almsot like a mashed potatoes with salsa on top, and it was naturally very good.
The last day we woke up early to pack up all of our things. This time I slept through a lot of the drive which definitely did not take as long, but was still about 6 hours. It was a little more uncomfortable because we had been using the same bus for the entire trip so I was definitely ready to get back on the ship by the end of the time. We stopped in various pit stops and Swakopmund again to do a little shopping and buy some stamps to send pastcards and such. Overall I really enjoyed our short stay in Namibia and I've heard some amazing stories from my roommates about sand boarding and other thigns on the dunes. I definitely want to go back!
Today was called South Africa day because it was all about prepping us for Capetown tomorrow. I am SO pumped for this, I was actually planning on applying to Rhodes University through Geneseo if Semester at Sea didn't work out. Unfortunately I have caught a little bit of a cold from camping in the rain, but I have been starting to feel better. I can't be sick while trying to enjoy South Africa! I have a ton of neat things planned and I'll write back on Sunday afterwards!
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