We kicked off our 2014 clinic season with a Horsemanship and Cow Work Clinic in Namibia. We took full advantage of the opportunity to explore the country while we were there and began our visit with an African Safari!

We arrived in Africa Thursday, Jan. 30 and piled directly into a van after 46 hours traveling, and headed to Erindi Elephant Camp to spend the night.  We stayed in quaint little two room “cabin” (for lack of an African description). Due to the jetlag, I was up at 3 a.m. the next morning. The camp kept a spotlight on a waterhole not far from the cabin, about 50 yards away, where animals could come into water and be visible to camp visitors. Unable to sleep, I went out to see if any animals were watering.

Surprisingly, there was a rhino, a bunch of eland, two hippos out of the water with a baby, and multiple wildebeest and gazelle! It was pretty interesting to watch how all the animals, even the rhino, made a wide berth around the hippos.  The experience was already very cool, as I had already seen three animals that we hadn’t seen during our last round of clinics in Africa!

That morning, we went on a game drive and again had the opportunity to see a lot of animals we hadn’t seen before—waterbuck, giraffe and black wildebeests.

Later that day, we loaded up and headed to Etosha National Park, which we had been looking forward to since the last visit two years ago.  When we arrived at the lodge outside the park, they told us that some lions had killed a giraffe that morning near a waterhole just inside the park.  So, we loaded up and took off to investigate. Sure enough, there were five lions under a tree, napping, not quite 100 yards from a dead giraffe by a waterhole.  We took a million pictures of the lions, thinking they might be the last ones we would see, before loading up to head to another waterhole to see what we could find.

On the way, we saw more giraffe and quite a few zebra up close…the experience just kept getting better and better! That evening, we went back to check on the lions and to take some more pictures before leaving the park and heading to the lodge.

The next day we had a nice breakfast, then took off to check on the lions by the first watering hole we visited the previous day.  There were now 12 lions and they were all busy doing lion things, from resting to eating to mating! It was very interesting to see them in their natural habitat.

The next two days, we drove around Etosha and saw some amazing things, including a herd of elephants not even 50 feet away. One of the bulls told us in no uncertain terms that we were in his way—we quickly got out of his way.  I told Henk, our amazing guide and clinic host, that I wanted to see some baby elephants playing in the water…what do you know, that’s what happened next!

After we left the baby elephants, a giraffe joined us and loped down the road beside us for 50 yards!  After he left us, we continued down a dirt road without event until we came around a corner and saw a rhino crossing the road not even 30 feet in front of the vehicle.  He dropped his head as we skidded to a stop—we all thought he was going to put a horn through our radiator. But, after a moment assessing the situation, he turned back into the bush, allowing us to catch our breath. Whew, that was close!

That sums up our amazing safari. We were very fortunate—I think we saw in one trip what would normally take 10 trips to see.