Mowani Mountain Camping...
Trip Start
Jun 07, 2008
1
121
188
Trip End
Jun 28, 2009
Twelfontein, Damaraland,
Namibia
Friday, January 23, 2009
Before sunset, we went on a walk with Frederick, the ranger. He grew up only a few kilometers from here, and he has 10 brothers and sisters. He speaks Damara. He is studying to get to the highest level of guide in Namibia and he knows a lot about the animals and especially the plants and rocks here
With Frederick, a great guide!
. On the walk we learned about the Mopane trees (where the Mopane worms like to live - people eat them here!), and we saw rock paintings of men running that are about 2000 years old. I tried to find an animal that they were hunting, but did not see any. It is an ancient place. Dad and I climbed to the top of one of the mountains and the view was amazing. There are rock pythons and adders here, but we did not see any on the walk. Before we left, a rock python was in the tea room, but it went into the rocks before we saw it. We also saw lots of huge igamas - they have red heads and tails with blue and white on their stomach, backs, and feet. They look like they are doing pushups all the time - they do it to keep cool and check out their terrain,At sunset, everyone sits on the rocks and they even serve drinks and snacks. There was an Austrian man, Klaus and his wife who were very nice. Klaus is a photographer and he was waiting for the right light to take a photo of a certain tree - he had been waiting five days and sadly it did not happen again last night! But he let me look through his camera and told me about light and how to find good light and he took photos of us. I liked him.
The manager of Mowani, Vincent, told me a story about a black mamba that he had to catch at another lodge in the Caprivi Strip. Some Australian guests said that there was a dead mouse in their tent - when he went to find it, he saw the mouse, but then noticed that there was the tail of a snake sticking out from under the bed. He got a stick to pull it out and it kept getting longer and longer then it tried to strike him. He beat it with his Maglite torch and he thought it was dead so he put it in a closed wastebasket. The next morning when he went to throw it out, it jumped out at him again and tried to strike him. Luckily, Vincent had broken its jaw, so it could not bite him, but it definitely scared him! I don't really want to see a black mamba!
