African Adventures

For the past few days, we've been camping in the Namib desert, Soussuvlei to be more specific.  Let's just say that it's very hot. We arrived in the campsite before sunset, and watched the sun sink over the hills, using the lighting to take interesting pictures. The next day we drove a bit to a sand dune called Big Daddy, aptly named, as it is taller than the Port Hills. We climbed up it, although only got to halfway before we became utterly exhausted, then rand back down the side, which was very fun. AT the bottom, there was a large silt pan called Deadvlei, which is full of petrified trees. We wandered around that for a bit, desperately looking for some shade. The next day we got up before sunrise (ugh), so we could watch it from the dunes. We didn't go as far as Big Daddy, instead we went to one called Dune 45. We didn't get there before sunrise, but we climbed it when it was cool, and then ran down, and then climbed another one, and then ...

On Wednesday , we picked up the truck. Long story short, it’s pretty cool. Here’s a picture, in which you should ignore me eating lunch inside: Yesterday ( Thursday ), we took the truck for a test drive. Mum found a nearby private game park called Daan Viljoen, so we decided to go there. No sooner than we had driven through the gates, we spotted a giraffe over a small valley. Upon closer inspection, we located a minimum of five more, plus a handful of oryx and zebras. It needn’t be said that we were all very excited. To start off with, I took some pictures with my phone, using a pair of binoculars to effectively zoom in. They’re not brilliant, so I’ll spare you the details. After this, dad got his proper camera out, with the super-duper safari lenses on, and we took some infinity better pictures on that. Here are a few: After several minutes of gawking at distant giraffes, dad told us too look behind the truck. It just so happened that a small group of springbok ...

Ugh, how do I start this? Right, so, our first flight (the one that I had to get up at 3:00 in the morning for) was cancelled (effectively), so that stuffed up all of our plans. We had to move all three of our flights, and ended up staying overnight in Sydney. It wasn't that bad though. We saw the opera house (which was pretty cool), and went to the botanical gardens. Dad had just bought a new camera, so we all took turns with that. There were lots of cool birds, and a very confident kookaburra. Here are some of the pictures, but not from dad's camera, as we haven't downloaded them to the laptop yet: After staying for the night, we had a 15 hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. For some part of this flight, we were over Antarctica, and everyone on the plane was taking pictures (including me). Here are the ones I took, just as we reached the edge of an ice shelf: When we got to Johannesburg, it felt like midnight so we just crashed in the BnB. Our l...