Well survived the aerobatic flight inspite of Trina slipping the pilot a little extra to get rid of me. Taking a day out while Trina goes dune buggying and hopefully be sandboarding this afternoon (wind willing) so might as well get completely up to date and throw a few more photo's up.
Day 40 - Harness Wildlife Foundation
Long boring drive, arrived just on sunsite to setup camp. Spent a couple of hours playing with baby meercats and some sneaky mongoose. Spent the night being kept awake by the lions roaring, very scarey as they were only a couple hundred metres away.
Day 41 - Animal Feeding - Etosha National Park
Woke up bright and early for the game feeding, Harness is basically a sanctuary for wounded and unwanted animals. Very excited as today we finally get to complete the big five and check out some leopards. Unfortunatly the animals are caged in large compounds and we only are allowed to go in to the cheetah enclosure. Probably a good thing as both the lions and leopards amuse themselves by charging directly at the tourists!!! Got an amazing video clip of a fully grown lion charging at a very flimsy fence. What was even funnier was one of the guys reacted to this charge by throwing the tour leader Shaz in between him and the lion :-).
The leopards were as beautiful as we had expected but would love to see one in the wild.
Day 42 - Etosha
Spent the day game driving on the truck through a major national park.
Day 43 - Etosha
Ditto
Day 44 - Etosha, Bushcamp
Ditto, second bushcamp of the trip parked up in a desert, felt sorry for the girls who had to walk about 1km to find a concealed toilet stop.....sat watching the sunset with some great south african port and cheeses....lifes tough.
Day 45 - Skeleton Coast, Swakopmund
Drove down towards Swakopmund across some very desolate coast, at times visibility was only 20m from the sandstorms. Lunch was at the seal colony, man those guys need to sort out their b.o. problem....
Day 46 - Swakopmund - Quad bikes
Quad biking was very very cool, racing up sides of some massive dunes and then roaring down at full noise. Trina was showing off by going in the fastest group (I think she fancied the instructor). I took an automatic which was a lot slower but about right for me, some of the guys got in some wicked jumps off the dunes. Finished up with a ride home along the beach against the sunset.
Day 47 - Swakopmund - Aerobatics, Rest day
Was meant to start the day with sandboarding but the winds were too high so in the afternoon headed out to the airfield to watch some of the guys parachuting (tandem). Trina suprised me with a present of an aerobatic ride. It was a huge thrill, they use a specially designed aerobatic plane called the Pitts Special and it pulls over 5g's, felt my whole body being squashed as he barrel rolled, looped, stalled, and inverted. I couldn't stop laughing the whole way. The grand finally was a low level aerobatic display right across the airport. When he said low level I didn't really think through what he meant. We've got some cool movie clips, at one point on the video the plane dissappears behind a bus!!!!!
They also have an onboard camera which records your facially expression, luckily for me the pilot pulled a high g turn at the beginning which killed the camera.
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