Namibia day 9 - Sunset over Damaraland

It was another early start, we are not getting much rest on this trip! We had breakfast at 6am and were on the safari vehicle by 6.30am to go find some desert adapted elephants. These elephants are smaller than savannah elephants, due to the lack of food. They need less water, have longer legs (proportionately) for climbing up the rocky hills and eat for 20 hours a day trying to get enough nutrition. They have no predators here but the environment makes survival very difficult.  We found a large herd which included a tiny one month old baby elephant (first extra), which is very exciting as the last time a cow elephant was pregnant the pregnancy did not survive. We also found some elephants lying down sleeping, which is very unusual but the desert elephants tend to do this while the savannah ones don't. There are also rhinos in Damaraland, they have a very large population but they are hard to find in this vast space. Sadly four rhinos were poached on Friday and they have not caught the perpetrators. We saw several species of birds but not close sightings. We stopped for a picnic coffee at about 9.30am, and then finally made it back to the lodge by 11am as by now it was blazing hot again. The daily temperatures are 10C warmer than is usual in March, and we are regularly experiencing 36C or 37C which is just too hot for us. 

We had a delicious lunch today - the kitchen is making such an effort to provide me with food to meet my dietary requirements -  and then we spent the afternoon relaxing in our air conditioned room looking out over the plains of Africa. The wifi is so poor but I managed to phone Luke and Adam to wish them Happy Easter, and I caught up with most of my editing. It is tricky to browse journals or anything on the internet as it is so slow. It has been good to have some down time just relaxing as it has been so busy since we started our trip.

Tonight we walked up to the viewpoint above the lodge for sundowners and to watch the sunset, where I took this photo. We chatted to a family at drinks who are on holiday having driven from Durban in South Africa, which is a very long drive!

Tomorrow is a busy day - we will leave after and early breakfast and go visit the Bushman etchings at Twyfelfontein before heading north to Etosha. The next place we are staying at has no wifi so I hope that I am able to blip tomorrow. This lodge has been very special and luxurious, we are quite sad to be leaving it tomorrow.