Etosha national park by the kids

HELLO PEOPLE, I am here again to present to you something that you all know and love, it is my blog, clap and cheer and do all the stuff I’ve told you to do in previous blogs. Do it, and now you may read.
On the 25th we went to go get the car from the place, when we got there we went to look at the car, it looked pretty nice, we were happy with it so went to the shop with it. We got a bunch of food and then we started driving to our first camping site, it was close to the Etosha national park, that’s what we were going to do when we were at our camp. When we started driving something surprising happened, I got bored (I lied, it’s not surprising), my mum has asked me to say what I did to entertain my self this is what I did. I read a bit on my kindle, then I played (annoyed) Emma then we started listening to harry potter (we are on the last book), after that I read a bit more on my kindle, then more annoying Emma, then I had a chat to Emma, then kindle, then we arrived. When we got there we set up and then looked around at our camp site, then we came back to the car, got out a blanket and lied it down on the grass. We were supposed to lay on it but me and Emma fought on it, I won of course, when we were done we laid on it and watched the stars. Then we went to sleep.
On the 26th we were going to the national park, we stared to early, we went to the park at 6:00 but it opened at 7:15, so we went back to the camp, now it’s time for, FACT TIME. Fact time: the main attraction in Etosha is the Etosha pan, it is a huge dried up Salt Lake. The Etosha Pan and the area that would later come to be known as Etosha National Park was first discovered by Europeans in 1851, when explorers Charles Andersson and Francis Galton came to the wild region in the company of Ovambo traders. Etosha can be loosely translated as “Great White Place” in the Ovambo language. It wasn’t always a national park, it was called an animal reserve in March 1907 then later in 1967 it was given the title of national park. The park is 22,270 km2 big and the Etosha pan is 4,760 km2, it takes over 23% of the total mass of the park. The park has about 114 mammal species, 340 bird species, 110 reptile species, 16 amphibian species and 1 species of fish (up to 49 species of fish during floods). Cheetahs and leopards are the least common animals to see, (did we see one? Wait and see). Fact time is over. When it was 7:00 we started driving to the park, when we got there we did the paperwork to get in and then we went in. When we got in we went to the plains, the first animal we saw was a zebra, there were loads of them, they were everywhere. We kept going and then we saw lots of springbok (springbok look like impala), we kept driving and looking at things, but then we saw something that we had to go over to. The thing we saw was lots of cars parked at a certain place, which means there’s something good over there, I rate things before I see them by the number of cars, let me show you. 1-2 cars: some thing decent, 3-4 cars: something good, 5 cars: something pretty good, 6-8 cars: something really good, 9-10 cars: something awesome, 11 cars: super amazing, 12 cars, over the roof. It may differ if someone just saw it and no one knows yet but what we saw there were about 12 cars. When we got there we saw two lions pretty close to the road, a lioness and lion, we waited there a little bit and then some thing amazing happened. Emma said, “look I think it’s another lion” and when I looked they were right, there was indeed another lion, it was a male lion just walking about 70-85 meters away. The other two lions didn’t seem to care, the lion just walked past and into the trees, then after that something else amazing happened. The lioness got up and walked over to the lion, she was nudging lion and then the lion got up, they walked around a bit, and then the male lion went on top of the female and they started mating, it was over in about 5 seconds. It was pretty awesome, we saw something that most people only dream of (but I bet nobody here dreams of lions matting, just checking). After that we kept driving, and then we saw a wildebeest, it was a big brown animal with a lump on its back. We kept driving and during the day we saw all these animals, zebra, springbok, wildebeest, lots of different birds, lots of different bugs, giraffes, squirrels, ostriches, Oryxs, mongoose, elephants and rhinos, crazy. At the end of the day we drove out of the car and went back to the camp to sleep.
On the 27th, this was our last day at Etosha so we hopped it would be good, when we left the camp we drove to the gate and went in, and then we saw it, three cars parked on the side of the road. Forget my car rating because this is early in the morning so there aren’t that many cars in the park at the moment. When we got over there we were looking around and then somebody (don’t remember who) said, “I see something moving in there”, they pointed it out and then I saw it. It was a lion sized thing, but when I looked in the binoculars, I realised it was smaller, it looked like a feline shaped animal. When we were looking at it, I noticed that there was another head out there to, just following the other one, we watching it until it got out of sight. Fast forward to the evening when we are back at the camp: we were looking through the pictures and when we found the pictures of the lion/leopard/cheetah (one of them). We studied it and found it had spots, that takes out the lion option, we went on the internet to look up the difference between a cheetah and a leopard, we found out that a cheetah has smaller spots than a leopard, we looked at the picture more and found out it had small spots. It was a cheetah, two of them. Now go back to the proper time where we can actually seeing the cheetah, we kept driving and I saw far of in the distance we saw something, big black dots, they were moving so they were an animal (but what?). I got out the binoculars and looked through them, they were close to the size of an elephant, but they weren’t tall enough, what else could it be, I looked at it again and I saw it, on the animal, a horn. It was a rhino. There was about 7 of them, they were too far away to get a good picture but it meant that we had already seen rhinos today. We kept driving and for a while we didn’t see much then we came across a road going to a water hole, it wasn’t that far so we decided to there. When we got there were wildebeest and zebras and springbok, there were also an oryx, we were just waiting there for a while looking at the animals and then… (if you don’t know something cool is going to happen you don’t read my blog enough). And then the oryx put its head up in alert and ten took off out of here, we were looking around and then we saw it, a male lion strolling towards the waterhole. It was a big one, its mane shone in the sun (I’m exaggerating aren’t I). It went over to the water hole and started licking up the water, we watched it for a while and then we drove out of the waterhole and onto the road. Only about 750 meters of driving and then dad skidded to a halt, “look a female lion in the grass” those were the exact words that dad spoke (or at least something close), but there was indeed a lion in the grass, only about 5 meters of the road. It was a big lioness, one of the biggest we had ever seen and then I saw something move about two meters to the right of it, than I said, “look another lion, just there” (I know I said that), “oh yeah, it a bit further behind”, what? No, that’s not right, it’s next to it, not behind its… wait, there is another one there to, and right next to that one, it’s another one, that makes four lioness just slumped on the side of the road relaxing, awesome. We parked there watching them for a while (mum took lots of pictures), and then quite a few more cars pulled up next to us (we can never enjoy a moment alone). Though all the cars, we still waited there for a bit watching them, then after a while we kept driving, then dad saw two things in the grass. It was a jackal, I mean two jackals they were fast and slightly annoying why? They kept moving further away. We kept going and see al l sorts of stuff, nothing new, just the same animals we’ve seen before, after a while we came back to the water hole to see if anything else had come, and there was, there was an ostrich (actually there was 7). When you are reading dad’s blog he will say there are 6, he is wrong, (according to me) (and I am always right) (Emma edit: no, he is not always right, sometimes, not all the time though), don’t listen to them, their wrong, (another Emma edit: no I’m not). We looked at the ostriches for a bit and then kept going. While we were driving an ostrich came on the road and started running in front of the car, it was pretty cool seeing the ostrich run. The ostrich kept following the road so we had to stick behind it, then we saw a herd of wildebeest, (fun fact: a herd of wildebeest is called a confusion). the ostrich ran off the road because of the wildebeest and the wildebeest scattered because of the car. We kept driving until we saw two cars, there were only two cars but in my car rating sequence it should have been a 16, there were two dotted cat-like things in the distance, they were about 100 meters away and they were walking further away, we watched them for a bit and then by the time we kept driving they were about 200 meters away. To skip a fast forward I’m going to tell you that it was two… (dramatic music), CHEETAHS!!!!!!!! When we were driving pretty close to the exit, we saw another car stopped, we went over there and then we saw car pulled over so we pulled over. We were looking around and then dad saw a feline shape near the road, and then I saw it, it had no spots so it was a lion. It was moving towards the road then, it came out of the grass and started walking on the road, then one more came out, and then another, three lions were on the road, we could see them clearly, it was cool. We didn’t stay that long because the park was closing soon and we had to get out, when we got out we went to the camp and went to sleep.
On the 28th we drove from Etosha to Henties Baai, we are staying there for 2 days, the drive there is a 5 hour drive it’s going to take while but hope it’s going to be worth it.
My mum has assigned me to do research about an animal for my science work, my animal is a cheetah and here is my work. Cheetah’s bodies grow to between 1.1m and 1.4m metres long and their tail grow to about 65cm to 80cm. Their weight is from 34kg to 54kg, males are slightly heavier than females. There top speed is 112kmh, they can accelerate to their top speed in 3 seconds. Cheetahs have about 2-8 cubs at a time, the cubs stay with them for 12-24 month, they usually hunt during the day. Cheetahs have no mating season, they mate any time of the year, unlike other big cats, cheetahs don’t roar. They are one of the oldest spices of cats, dating back to 3 million years ago. Cheetahs don’t often drink water and they can’t taste sweetness. Cheetahs used to be used for hunting long ago, they used to be used as pets by royal people. Cheetahs normally live alone and the most time they stay with another cheetah is with their cubs. Cheetahs are prey to many animals including lions, hyenas and wild dogs. Cheetahs are not aggressive and only attack when hunting, they will flee from fight without defending themselves, they are generally non-conflict animals.
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The end
Andrew (10 years old)

Gooooooooood morning folks. In this blog, you are going to experience great animals and good times. Etosha facts: Etosha national park is one of the biggest parks in Africa. It has a salt pan in it that can be seen from space. (We do not know how far from space.) the salt pan is a lake that dried out and left the salt behind. The salt pan is about 130 k long. Zebras: in the wild zebras can live up to 25 years. A zebra’s stripes are like human fingerprints. Zebras can sleep standing up. There are three species of zebras. Zebras’ stripes are for camouflage.
On the 25th we rented a car for three weeks. It looked really nice, but it turned up to be not that nice. We did shopping and got quite a lot of stuff. (Well, I guess we are gone for weeks.) Well, anyway, we drove to Etosha camp. To keep myself busy, I read, listened to harry potter (by the way, we are up to the last book) and chatted with Andrew. We had an early night. Just before we went to bed, we watched the stars and me and Andrew wrested.
On the 26th we had our first day in Etosha national park. We started too early. We had to wait. We saw a lot of zebras, springbok, wildebeest, birds, lions (we saw two lions mating and then a third lion walked pasted them) giraffes, south African ground squirrels, bugs (we saw these big black bugs that were the size of a deck of cards) Ostrich, Oryx, a big nest in the tree, yellow mongoose, elephant’s and Rhinos. I felt really very lucky. I know not many people get to see what we saw, so we were very fortunate. I was very happy that the animals were free. That made me feel happy. My favourite moment of that day was when the Zebras rolled around in the dirt and when we were driving next to a dazzle of zebra (When there is more than one zebra it is called a dazzle). In the evening, we had a board game night.
On the 27th we had our second day in the park. we only saw two new things that we did not see on the first day was a jackal and a CHEETTAH. We saw two cheetahs in the morning and two cheetahs in the afternoon. We saw the jackal close and the cheetahs further away. Well at least we think they are cheetahs because they could have been leopards. We then went to the water hole. We saw a lion down at the water hole. First it was not there then all the animals stepped aside for the lion to pass. When we were on the way back from the water hole we saw four lions. First one then we spotted two more and then another one. There were four. When we were on our way back to the exit we saw an ostrich on the road. It was running. We followed it for a while then it ran off the road. Then we saw three lions on the road.
On the 28th we packed up our camp and drove to bucks camping lough. It was about a 5 hour drive. I could see open spaces as we drove. Lots of sand. Mountains and stuff. When I looked out of my window, I saw brown sand and small sand hills. When we arrived at our new camp, we set up. We did a bit of shopping. Then we did boring old blog. Had dinner around a fire because it was fricking cold. Night-night.
Emma (8 and a half years old)Les mer