Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Etosha National Park is one of Africa’s largest and finest national parks.
Okaukuejo is the southernmost of its six major “camps”, and its main administrative centre.
By day and by night, Okaukeujo’s waterhole offers visitors oft-superb, comfortable, relaxed and close wildlife viewing.
As this three part series illustrates, the night of 05 November 2022 was very rewarding.
One CommentThis post’s musical bonus really is astounding, I think.
November 4 2022, at Okonjima, was one of the most rewarding days of our lives.
The immediately-preceding post’s leopard encounter was its most electrifying moment, but we also saw another leopard, giraffes galore, cheetahs, many other animals, and some beautiful country.
Circa 7 pm, we adjourned to a hilltop, to enjoy “sundowners”…and/or the actual sundown.
I took the featured photo at 7.06 pm.
The other images, below, are in chronological order.
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This post is the “morning after” sequel to the one that showed Lila stashing her “prize”, shortly after she had killed a Red Hartebeest calf, late in the afternoon of 03 November 2022.
I took the featured image, above, at 7.55 am on 04 November 2022, when we returned to the relevant tree.
As you can see, Lila’s kill was quasi-intact, still “safe” in the tree’s canopy.
“When will Lila return to it?”, we wondered.
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If the relevant timepiece registered only minutes and hours, it would have said “9. 23 am” through all of this post’s eight images, which are presented in chronological order.
As it happens, my camera also records seconds, so I know that only 39 of them elapsed from first to eighth photo.
From image “1” through “7” only 21 seconds passed.
A recently-bathed Superb Fairy Wren – Malurus cyaneus – can adopt a great many different positions within such a “short” time!
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All four images feature the same moon.
However, as is true of just about anything observed more than once, “our” moon offers an infinite number of different “faces”.
The featured image shows a “blood moon” over Perth’s Lake Monger at 9.31 pm on 31 January 2018.
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The mangled – but not rusted – metal object pictured above has sat on one of the world’s most “desolate” beaches since shortly after 29 January 1943.
It is an engine cowling from a Lockheed Ventura bomber which plunged into the nearby Atlantic on that day, off Namibia’s Skeleton Coast.
A short distance inland – as you can see, above – is the western edge of the world’s oldest desert’s “sandsea”.
That Ventura, several other planes, a number of ships, and a land-based convoy’s extraordinarily arduous/audacious mission were all part of an amazing true story of shipwreck/s, a plane-crash, and herculean rescue efforts.
MV Dunedin Star’s demise resulted in far fewer deaths than did RMS Titanic’s, but the smaller vessel’s end-story is, arguably, the more “titanic”.
One CommentAlso starring a fine example of “sleepless rust”, this post’s featured image is much easier to “read” than was the immediately-preceding, teasing post’s.
Obviously, here, you are looking at a shipwreck.
No reliable figure is even possible, but it is generally reckoned that Namibia’s Skeleton Coast is the world’s largest “ships’ graveyard”.
At least several hundred vessels – quite possibly, more than one thousand – have succumbed to its “treacherous” mists, turbulent waters, “carnivorous” rocks.. and to its utter remoteness.
For several centuries, sailors who outlived their ship would, inevitably, soon share its fate – on a shore where rain hardly ever falls and no rivers permanently flow.
Until well into the 20th century this was a place no road reached, and where no humans lived.
Even so, whales have provided far more of the Skeleton Coast’s skeletons than have ships and sailors.
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Namibia’s Skeleton Coast is one of the world’s starker, least-peopled, least-rainy shorelines.
Apparently, its name refers to its extraordinary high number of visible skeletons/bones of two things – whales and ships.
However, whales and ships are not the only providers of startling “skeletons”…
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“Intelligent, opportunistic, cooperative, yet also aggressive/territorial, highly attentive parents, omnivorous, oft-monogamous, very vocal, highly adaptable.”
Homo sapiens?
Yes, the “cap” fits, but not exclusively.
It is also a good description of another species – one which many humans revile, resent, defame and kill.
One CommentWhen even the most ardently water-wise member of our own species has a thoroughly enjoyable bath, water may not be wasted, but it is necessary.
Some other species, however, have hugely-enjoyable baths without getting damp, at all.
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