Camping trip

It has been a busy weekend. We decided to go camping. I know, I know. I said never again a few years ago, but this African camp, Omatozu Game Park, convinced me to try camping again. We reserved a tent and headed out early Saturday morning. The camp is just about 25 km north of the town of Okahondja, and took us about  2 hours to get there. The drive was nice, Traffic was light and we got to finally see something besides city. Here are the pictures of the camp ground.

pool house

Main lodge

Ceiling of main lodge

Light in lodge. It was a wire basket with roots! So cool.

Dinning area

View of water hole from lodge

I hope you can see that it was very nice. Then they showed us our "tent".

Outside

Inside!

 I like having a king size bed in a tent. It beats a sleeping bag. It also had air conditioning and a complete modern bathroom in the back complete with a shower, toilet, vanity and even a hair dryer. I decided I could do this kind of camping, A three course steak dinner and a hot breakfast of eggs, bacon, yogurt, cereal, bread, salami, juice was also included. The complete cost of this "rustic" camping experience--N$1,800 or about $140.00 US. We thought it was a pretty good deal. Since this is the low season, we were the only ones there. It was like having our own private wait staff. It felt a bit strange, but we did get excellent service. 

On top of it all...

It is also a game farm. This simply means that in addition to running the ranch with cattle, the owners have worked to co-exsist with the native animals. We saw...

Impala

Tower of giraffes 

Termite mounds surrounded by bitter aloe plants.

Dung beetles. They were kind of gross, but at the same time fascinating. We watched them for quite a while.

Baby puma....

And mommy.

Just one of many birds. We also heard them throughout our stay, Many of them are very noisy little critters..


 We also saw onyx and a very small antelope but were unable to get pictures of them. Walking around the farm, we saw many footprints that we tried to identify. One really stumped us. It looked like a paw print of a larger cat, maybe cheetah or lion in size, but only had three toes and a pad. Cats have four toes and a pad. Birds have three toes, but no pads. So we don't know if it was a deformed cat,  an abnormally fat toed ostrich. or maybe a giant hare walking on tip toe. We debated all the options and came up empty.

We left the campground and went into the town of Okahondja. It is known for its wood carvings. On both sides of the town there are rows of little tin sheds where local craftsmen sell their wares. They had some beautiful things. We got so caught up in looking at everything, that we forgot to take pictures. I am sure we will go back and recommend it to any visitors. It is well worth a couple of hours of time. I purchased a lovely iron wood carving of a woman's head, a pair of giraffe bookends and this amazing little, about 4", beehive basket. Hurrah! I now have some decorations in my living room. The artists were amazing to talk to.

At the end of the day there was a stunning sunset over the watering hole.

That was day one.

Stay tune for day two posting tomorrow.