Namibian Vacation: Lion Feeding

Saturday, we drove to Mt. Etjo lodge which took all morning. This is a game preserve created by conservationist Jan Oelofse, known for supplying and training the animals for the Hollywood film Hatari (1960) starring John Wayne as a hunter capturing animals for zoos. I remember watching the first hour on TV when I was little. (Come to think of it we used to watch a lot of movies on the CBS and NBC Night at the Movies, but only the first hour and they were all pretty bad, mostly starring George Hamilton.) Red Buttons was Wayne’s funny sidekick and Elsa Martinelli the love interest. I’ll have to find it on Netflix or Amazon Prime sometime. There were flamingos in the fountain and African ducks.

We swam in the hotel pool and met a German gay couple, chatting with them briefly. Tea was served on the verandah, then a three-hour game drive—much tamer and touristy than the ones in Etosha. We did see an elephant and two rhinos up close, and a baby giraffe with its mother. Hella said it was only a day only because we could see its umbilical cord.

After dinner of kudu sausage and oryx Bolognese, there was an extra attraction of a lion feeinding for $100 Namibian dollars ($20 US).  Jerry was not interested, but a show’s a show, so I went. Interestingly, the event was like a piece of theater.  Several of the guests drove in two buses about five minutes to a small building. The entrance led to a tunnel at the end of which were two concrete walls at right angles forming an L. There were two long padded benches in front of a ten-inch tall slit in the walls, covered with bars.

We sat down and could make out the corpse of an antelope on the other side of the wall. The lights on our side snapped off and were illuminated on the other side. Almost immediately a pride, consisting of one male and nine females, loudly pounced on the cadaver, loudly devouring it. The male was in the mating mood and mounted one of the females three times during the course of the meal. The sex was quick (about 30 seconds) and the partners growled a lot during the act. The male and his lover left the repast first. Slowly the other females stalked off after they had their fill. Once or twice the male looked right at me and it was scary.

Sunday, we were taken to a crafts market. It was very unpleasant because we had to bargain hard to get a fair price. Nothing was marked and the vendor would take a twig or letter opener and scratch a price on their forearm. Then you haggled. Hella said offer half the first figure. When I saw a nice carved elephant—which I collect from various trips—I offered half the vendor’s price and he replied “Oh no this is a good price. I give you a Sunday price” and the write down a figure much more than I was willing to pay. I hate bargaining and prefer it when something is labeled and you and take it or leave it. Imagine haggling in Barnes and Noble.

Then if you did buy something, the vendor would have another vendor take it to have wrapped and you would have to look at their store and the cycle would start all over again. I bought a few things, and probably paid too much for them.

We were going back to NYC the next day. Hella and Crystal dropped us off at our guest house back in Windhoek which was next to the Namibian president’s residence on Robert Mugabe Avenue. We had dinner at Joe’s Beerhouse on Nelson Mendela Avenue with all foreign tourists. The food was delicious, a seafood cocktail, fillet with peppercorn and bamboo shoot sauce, and for desert a pastry stuffed with raisins and apples, accompanied by ice cream and cherries.  

Then we flew to Johannesburg for our flight to NYC, 15 hours. Plus we had about nine hours in Johannesburg and were so tired we didn’t feel like doing anything. There is only airport where I would want to spend an entire day—Paris. There’s nothing distinctive about Johannesburg airport. Anyway, we finally got on the flight and I finished watching The Avengers. I’m sorry but the Hulk doesn’t help anybody. Otherwise, I enjoyed it. But it wasn’t as directly thrilling as the lion feeding.

Namibian Vacation: Game Drives in Etosha

Between our package tours to the desert and Etosha National Park in Namibia, we stayed one day in Windhoek at the same guest house where we were earlier in the week. While seeking the crafts fair during this free day, I found Uncle Spike’s Book Exchange, a used-book store with hundreds of paperbacks in English, German, and some Namibian. He actually had a stack of tattered comic books, none from the Silver Age, but I bought one for 5 Namibian dollars—which is about 60 cents US. It was a ragged copy of Captain Atom, a Charleton Comic drawn by Steve Ditko in 1967. The most interesting element was a full page house ad for Charlton, a second-rate house which trailed behind DC and Marvel. The ad read “Action Super Heroes? We Got ‘em! And they’re not half bad.” Not a very ringing self-endorsement.  We also learned of the death of Phyllis Diller which made me sad because when I was a kid, she was on TV all the time. Her braying laugh, bizarre outfits, and mile-long cigarette holder always made me giggle.

Our four-day excursion to Etosha started the next day. Our guide was Hella, a Namibian-born woman of German descent in her 70s who had a thick German-African accent. The only other person on the tour was Crystal from Austria, a pharmacist who spoke very little English and had been to Africa over 20 times previously. We drove to the park in a large 4x4 vehicle (pronounced by Hella as “beetle”) equipped to drive on the rough roads and afford views of the animals. The drive to Etosha was just as long as the one to the desert.

We stayed in four different lodges and took several exciting game drives, sighting all kinds of wildlife. The most striking images were at the watering holes when almost all the animals—giraffes, elephants, zebras, springbok, etc.—were not moving because they are afraid of a single lion.  Cars surrounded the scene as if they were at a drive-in movie. The elephants actually were not afraid of the lions and did move, two shook trunks with each other in greeting. But all the rest were standing perfectly still as if posing for a picture.

The first lodge was commercial and upscale, full of German and South Africans, with very few Americans. We got up at 6AM the next morning looking for lions since we had spotted that one at the watering hole the previous evening. We were one of the first ones out of the lodge and were rewarded with viewing of a pride of lions consisting of two males, and several females and cubs. The head male was obviously hooked up with the female who was currently in heat. He followed her around as the pride crossed in front of our car, allowing us to get several close-ups. Later we saw elephants washing each other and zebras having sex.

That evening’s lodge was more rustic than the previous one and not as nicely kept. The public toilet in the men’s room was blocked and had been for a week—according to an angry letter written on the toilet door by a tour guide. There was a watering hole at the lodge where we saw a rhino during sunset and a matriarchal herd of elephants after dinner. There was no internet and the only TV was tuned to European soccer and South African rugby, but we didn't need any other entertainment.

The next day Friday was spent driving to the Etosha Pan, previously a huge lake, but now a dry stretch of salt. Later we encountered secretary birds and khory bustards, two species of cartoonish birds which looked like crosses between the Roadrunner and Franklin Pangborn. I had always thought secretary birds were so called because they looked like they should have dictation pads and were ready to follow you around and make travel arrangements. More elephants, zebras, giraffes. We stopped for a swim at a tourist center then drove out of the park to a lovely private lodge. At cocktails, we learned that there was a shooting outside the Empire State Building that morning and that the US political world was still in an uproar over Missouri Congressman Todd Akins’ stupid comment about rape not leading to pregnancy so it should not be an exception for abortion.

There were about ten guests including us. Hella explained there was a surplus of accommodations nearer to Etosha so this place, which was done up in a mining motif, was relatively vacant. The rooms were luxuriously safari style and the dinner was more game like oryx and springbok.