When one thinks of Africa often the first thing that comes to mind is Disney Classic, The Lion King. So when Danny and Jill asked me what I wanted to do during my visit, without hesitation my response was, “See every animal from The Lion King!”
One two hour flight, one (EDITOR’S NOTE: Two for Danny, he came all the way to Kenya to pick me up) seven hour shuttle, and one hour long jam packed bus ride later I was in Moshi, Tanzania eagerly awaiting my safari for the next morning. I gladly woke everyone at the crack of dawn screaming “Safari Day!” Soon after we were off to our three day, open roofed land cruiser …

Exiting Etosha we drove quickly through Namibia’s capital Windhoek before crossing the border directly into the Kahalari Desert, and the trans-frontier park shared by both South Africa and Botswana. This park is known for two things: being in the middle of nowhere and being home to a lot of cats. We knew we’d see lions, (the ONLY animal other than wildebeest we’ve seen in every park) but we were looking for cheetah.
We quickly made camp and went out for a drive and found a dead lion. Eventually the animal moved so in fact, it was not dead, just nearly dead. It was skinny and alone. Other visitors told us that earlier it opened its mouth revealing an abscess, probably earned …

My boss used to say, it was real and it was good but it wasn’t real good.  That was Namibia. Namibia is a beautiful country, but it was difficult. Unable to get money out of several ATM’s, we had visions of wandering through the desert without cash or petrol.   Not exactly a “real good” start.
Namibia is a incredibly striking country, from the arid desert of the south to the lush forests in the north.  We only had a short amount of time in Namibia so we skipped things like sand boarding, which we had done in Peru and Nicaragua and instead spent our time, soaking in natural hot springs in the desert, climbing 100m high red sand dunes for sunrise, …

Words can’t really express what it was like to ride an ostrich…

although some of us are better than others…

get kissed by an ostrich (evidence of danny’s fidelity, haha)..

get a neck massage by an ostrich….

And so you see we had our revenge, of sorts, on the ostrich which attacked me in Swaziland.  Take that flightless bird!