Vacation! The Water Mountain

looking back to September 2016:

Karen, Kit and I closed our vacation with a visit to the Waterberg, which I first encountered in November 2013, when I visited the Cheetah Conservation Fund outside Otjiwarongo.  For two weeks, I ate almost every meal (except a couple days spent at Etosha) at a picnic table gazing at this magnificent plateau of striated rock.  The sun rose over it sometime before breakfast, and at dinner the sunset glinted off of it.  I wanted to go there.

Close-up or from a distance, it's glorious.

So did Kit and Karen, so we drove south from Grootfontein and checked into one of the 'self-catering' chalets or bungalows operated by the national park service.  'Self-catering' meant a braai (barbecue) stand, a sink and a small fridge; no pots, pans, utensils or stove.  You can figure out most things on a grill, but not how to boil noodles without a pan to hold the water.  Luckily we had frozen pizzas for back-up.

Dinner also not so important when this is the view from the braai stand.

Even luckily-er, the baboons who had seriously frightened a friend staying here months earlier left us alone, although they were a constant presence at the site.  They had gotten very aggressive with S. and her family, coming right up to their chalet and climbing on their car, apparently trying to open doors or jimmy locks or something.  When we checked in, the desk clerk recommended throwing rocks at them if they bothered us.  Those suckers are big, they're strong, and their teeth are very serious.  I am not throwing rocks at them.  We found, fortunately, that they tended to move away from us as we walked around the campgrounds, and more fortunately we didn't run into any on the more isolated trails.

I didn't take many baboon pictures.  It's like photographing
pigeons in a city park in the USA.

'Water' in Afrikaans means 'water,' and 'berg' is 'mountain' in both Afrikaans and German, so 'Waterberg' is -- AMAZING.  For those of us who've been in the desert a bit of a while, at least.  There were trees (canopies touching!), grass (green, not yellow!), mud (muuuuudddddd!!!!), an occasional little stream or squelchy spot to be leapt, oh my swooning heart.

This is making my brain explode all over again.

We did not see rhinos*, which have been relocated here as a safe and nurturing location for them.  Lots of mongooses, dik-diks, baboons, and Kit and Karen saw the one Namibian parrot and some love birds during a stroll whilst I tried the swimming pool.  Mostly it's about the water with me.

Damara dik-dik

Black mongoose

Ringed or banded mongoose with indigenous tourists

Also another dassie; it's smack-dab in the middle of the photo.

Once enough baboons convened at the pool, I elected to vacate.
That's how seriously I take that musculature and confident attitude they radiate.

Oh, and the views climbing and at the top were pretty good.

Thanks so very much to Kit and Karen for visiting, and for lugging me along.  Also, I'm very sure they did not divvy the bills up quite so evenly as they might have; my Peace Corps stipend thanks them, too.


*I've wimped out on trying to decide whether rhinoceri, rhinoceroses, rhinocerat or rhinocera is the correct plural.  Blogger likes the second, but I think it inelegant.