3 July 2011 - Etosha Pan - Day 2

We started a little slower today, and made our first stop at the Otjikoto Lake. Very interesting. It was a sub-terrainian cave formed by an underground river, and then the roof collapsed. Now there is this round hole in the ground, 100 meters across, and between 60 and 100 meters deep. It is the strangest thing to see a lake sitting in a round hole in the ground in the middle of a flat plain! At a time in the early 20th century this was the main water source for the town of Tsumeb. They used a specially made steam engine to pump water up from the lake and along to Tsumeb about 20 km away. Once, during the 1st World War, a group of German soldiers who were about to surrender to the Allies first dumped their last munitions over the cliffs into the lake in an effort to prevent the British from getting their hands on the weapons. A number of cannons and other arms have been recovered by divers recently and are now in museums in various places. Apparently there are still a lot more weapons down in the depths of the lake.


On to Etosha pan. At a water hole about 15 km inside the gate we found the largest collection of game we have ever seen together. There were Kudu, Oryx, Impala, Springbok, Zebra, Wildebeest, Giraffe, Warthog. We watched for at least half an hour before moving on. Through the rest of the day we saw a huge variety, but never all together in these large numbers.


Around mid-day we hit our 3000 km from home mark and stopped at a rest stop to mark it. The kids did their usual ritual, and then we moved on as the rest stop was really not well equipped!


In the afternoon we stopped at a water hole named "OlifantsBad" and found another GeoCache. We dropped one Travel bug, and found another.


We ended the day at Etosha Safari Camp. This place has a very unusual theme, and is strangely built. It is deliberately skew and made from scrap vehicles, and all sorts of other junk-yard bits and pieces. But it is interesting. There is a lot of history of the African struggle for freedom recorded all around the dining area, where we had dinner, and then breakfast in the morning.