Scavenger Hunts, Hiking, and Game Drives...Oh My!

The day after we went on our tour, Jan and Paula split us into our school groups and let us loose in Windhoek. Our goal was to answer all the questions that they provided us on a piece of paper about different shops, buildings, and parks around town. They wanted us to get our bearings in town and be able to navigate the area ourselves without needing a tour guide.

One of the places we were supposed to go was to the Parliament building--I posted pictures in a previous post. The day before Uuanee had taken us up to there, but I had really wanted to get more pictures. I pulled out my camera and went to turn it on, and of course the battery was dead. My group mates took lots of pictures though so hopefully I will be able to get some from them.

Another one of our jobs while we were in town was to find someplace to eat lunch. We ended up going to Spur's Steak House. The name totally reminded me of being in the U.S.. We sat down and our server came over to our table. He was a native Namibian and his name was Joslyn "the boy not the girl." The food was great! I had chicken Kabobs with Peri-Peri sauce on them. Peri-Peri sauce is a spicy kind of marinade/sauce that they use A LOT in cooking here--I love it!

On Tuesday we had a free day. Melanie, Katie, Kayla, and Rayna planned a hike and invite everyone to go. There were 13 of us who decided to embark on this adventure and I'm so glad I decided to be part of it. I have always felt so comfortable and free when I am in nature and it was amazing to have that experience here. We had read and been told that there was a possibility of seeing baboons and Kudu (a type of antelope), but we saw neither. However we did see TONS of birds, which was one of my favorite parts of the experience.

Looking down toward the water from the top of the hill on our hike.


Roommate picture: Anna (left), Me, Allison (right).

Grasshopper.

Wednesday was our first Game Drive. For those of you who are not familiar with the term "Game Drive" it is a place where you go, like Okapuka (the game farm we went to), to see game. They buy the game and then let it live on the land. This particular game farm has 20,000 acres where their animals get to roam. We saw lots of different animals, but my favorite were the rhinos. I even got to touch one. We also saw crocodiles, giraffes, Springbok, Blessbok, Oriks, Wildebeests, Sables, Warthogs (with babies :-) ), and lots of different birds. This was an amazing experience.

Just hanging out with the giraffes :-)

Wildebeest baby that had just been born and mommy left it. The jackals were about to eat the baby. Hopefully they got back to it before they got it.
Just touching a white rhino...no big deal!

A big male croc. We were seriously only 5 feet away.