Travel > Namibia - Africa

If you've never had the opportunity to visit Africa -- I highly recommend making time. Yes, the 18 hour plane ride can be a bit grueling and regardless of how poor or wealthy you are --- that is the minimum price you have to pay for southern Africa if you live in the United States or Europe: but, its a very small price to pay.

Namibia, a former German colony, is a spectacle that cannot be missed. Definitely visit Windhoek and make your way to the skeleton coast (named because European ships would run aground in the treacherous waters off the coast and the surviving sailors thinking they were saved when they washed up on land found themselves in the driest desert in the world - with little to no water and only sand dunes as far as the eye could see....the only recognizable things these poor souls found were the skeletons of sailors which had come before them...and the fate that awaited them). Once you visit the largest sand in the world, make your way up to Etosha national park. Here you'll find the dried remains of a gigantic lake which evaporated millions of years ago when an earthquake shifted the flow of the main river that fed it. The only thing left now is a giant white salty desert expanse (called the Etosha Pan). The whole area is a park with numerous watering holes. Around these holes, you'll find all kinds of animals including the most impressive of the (Big 5 game animals in Africa): the Lion.

I took the bottom picture of a couple of antelope sitting on the Etosha pan using a 200mm F/2.8 Canon lens with a 1.4 times teleconverter from about 600yards. The top picture I took at night with the same lens configuration on my Canon DSLR but I added a tripod and a wired shutter release to get enough light of these three young lions drinking by a watering hole. They don't look it from the pictures but these animals each weigh about 500 pounds and about half an hour after this picture was taken, we got the rare opportunity to see them hunt an antelope in the wild. The image of three 500 pound cats gracefully and effortlessly accelerating to bring down an antelope will be etched into my mind forever. Truly in Africa, after seeing such a sight, you understand that you are most definitely not at the top of the animal food chain. Lions are notoriously very loud eaters and throughout the night from our tents (on the ground with only a small wall between us and the lions) the lions continously reminded us that they were King here as they growled all night while they devoured their prize.

Lions at night by watering hole
Canon 20D | 200mm f/2.8 L | 1.4 tele | tripod

Antelope on Etosha Pan
Canon 20D | 200mm f/2.8 L | 1.4 tele | handheld