The Kalahari

After our last busy weeks in Cape Town, we manage to do exactly what we planned to do. Get away from it all: time schedules, meetings, passport troubles, work permits, interviews, night time thoughts about your PhD, cell phone reception and internet access. Now that we are back in the real world in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, we can tell you where we have been hanging out lately.
After our overnight stay in Upington, we headed straight into the Kalahari (fossil) dessert. The environment was very beautiful: red dunes, some trees, and even flowers. The emptiness of it all really caught us. Where in Belgium or Estonia can you drive 500 km without passing a fuel pump, a traffic light or a speed trap?

As a bonus, we were quite lucky to find the animals surviving in this harsh environment. Gemsbok, blue wildebeest and ostriches are ubiquitous in the dry river valleys, but to Joonas' excitement we also found cheetahs and lions, even on a number of occasions. One afternoon, we spotted a mating lion couple underneath a big tree. The next morning, we decided to try to find them again. On the way there, we were already quite lucky when two lionesses and their five cubs went drinking at a water hole. Some 10 km further we spotted the couple we were looking for, just next to the road. For two hours we could observe their mating behaviour. The sound a lion makes when getting an orgasm, believe me, goes right through your bones. I think the picture tells most of the story :-)