Last night I went on a river cruise. There were lots of birds, hippos, elephants, buffalos even baboons. We saw about 5 crocodiles and 3 monitor lizards. We saw about 40 species of birds from herons to marabou storks, to fish eagles to coucals. The hippos were cool. It was better than the time I got charged by them! Except this time they were nice and calm in the water.
My highlight of the Victoria Falls trip was this place near Victoria Falls I made a friend Ben from CALIFORNIA. We went lizard catching. He has a pet bearded dragon that’s pretty awesome compared to my skinks. But anyway I caught a gecko and held another shotgun! I’ve picked one up before but that was for hunting. This looked like a military weapon with a big magazine. It could have been anything. We went for dinner with the New Zealanders. It was their last night together. We had to dress up and stuff. It was warm inside with a pig on the spit. Ben ended up arriving and we talked about lizards. My starter came it was crocodile with a very yuck taste. My main was spareribs and veges. I got my face painted. Then we left. I also forgot to mention the drumming we did with some guys and Dad bought the CD so we can remember the moment of when my hands got remarkably sore. Yesterday we went to visit the Hoba meteorite the largest one on the planet. It was large as. Dad took a photo of me sitting on it. It was rock hard. It had puddles of rain on it, first rain for a while in Namibia which is good. These are some notes I copied from information we got at the Hoba site. The Hoba consists of 82.4% iron, 16.2% nickel and the rest Cobalt and other elements. It weighs 60 tons and it hit Namibia 80,000 years ago. Its thickness varies between 122 and 75 cm so its actually pretty small. The shallow pits and depressions on the horizontal upper surface of the meteorite are typical of high temperature meteorite corrosion during the passage through the earths atmosphere. Minor oxidation has occurred on the surface. Today we went to a preschool with 18 people. They sang us a song when we arrived which was very cute. I read them a story and we went outside. I took the 5 boys out to play soccer they were very good. When we had to go home I gave the boys a high five. They’re a good team. At the end I gave the community $2 to get it out of my pocket it was burning a hole in it anyway. We are in a desert with lots of lizards, even saw a snake at our campsite. At our other campsite we met a Dutch family and Axel my friend has a sling shot too and we like shooting targets with the 8 different types of ammunition. Shotgun, main, destroyer, large shotgun, poppers, dirt bomb, piercer and warning shot for scorpions. We climbed some dunes and slid back down them. We went four wheel driving and got to a place with lizards and small mice things. On our way back we saw some wild springbok, gemsbok and ostriches. Then I went in the field and played with Axel with our slingshots and went back to his place and lit a fire. Today we went to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was kept for 18 years just for South Africa’s justice. He was lucky as Steve Biko was beaten to death and shoved into a truck and killed just for Africa. When we arrived we saw these cormorants that were perched everywhere. It was like a black atmosphere. We got onto a bus and started to drive around the place. We saw some penguins. Then we went to the dog kennels which were bigger than the cells themselves. We got back on the bus and saw a colony of gulls and terns. We went to Nelson Mandela’s cell with a man who spent time in the jail himself. After that we saw a monument of rocks that every prisoner put down. Nelson Mandela was first to put one down. Then our guide gave a speech for the rainbow nation then we left and found the diamond museum. After we visited the bird park, we went to Table Mountain. We took the cable car up to the top of the mountain. Thats where we looked down at Capetown and all the people seemed like ants. The mountain is built up of black pica and grey quartz. It was very high up, over 1,000 metres, and we were higher than the clouds. Today we went to an awesome bird park, the biggest one in Africa. It had eagles, owls, toucans and all sorts of other birds. Then we went to the reptile house with snakes, turtles and other reptiles like that. There were also monkeys and my favourite African cat, the serval. We also saw the Stanley Crane, the national bird of Africa. It is also known as the blue crane and the paradise crane. The were 6 of them in the enclosure. In the photo I am holding a hybrid chicken. It has a hairy crest. Don't get your hopes up because I don't know what they taste like. Today we went horse riding and it was boring the horses were slow at first but then you start getting used to it. We went over a mountain with rocky paths made of limestone. I found a crystal and a great deal of touqiouzsen. We got to feed the horses after. They love hay. There were mice in the hay. There was a snake in the barn and a slingshot for the baboons. And now we are off to Capetown not knowing what it is like. Today we went on a safari and saw an elephant herd and half the animals we saw in Zebra National Park. There was a bird watch like what I saw when I went on the trip with Tim Park when we were looking for bitterns. This time I saw black-headed herons and speculated mousebirds, and frogs from the anura family. I caught one and brought it back to show everyone. Sarah and Meg came up to see. Meg left and Sarah caught one. Then we went to a pool and had a swim. We’re going on a night tour now so when I get back I’ll have a good story for you. The night tour wasn’t as good as Michael’s one. We only saw Kudu, Jackal, Buffalo and Elephants. And we didn’t have fleece coats so I was freezing. It was annoying. We came back and visited the neighbours and had burgers and a porcupine came to visit. Then we went to bed. The other neighbours got a visit from a servek, a kind of wildcat. |
About StanI am Stan and I like rhinos, birds and bird watching. I also like collecting rocks and stones. Archives
August 2013
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