This diary is about one leg of our vacation in Namibia where we had the most opportunity to see and photograph wildlife. I also want to mention and highlight the guest house/farm that we stayed at sort of as a courtesy to the couple that runs it, as we were indebted to them for the wonderful experience that we all had.
Our party of nine was accommodated effortlessly at the Nomtsas farm, owned and run by Heino and Heide Voights. With their permission, I am posting their addresses here for anyone who might be interested in a similar experience:
PO Box 12 , Maltahöhe, Namibia
Tel/ Telefax: ++264(0668) 1803
E-mail: a-voights@iafrica.com.na
They are the proprietors/keepers of a vast farm/game preserve in Namibia, and offer many experiences to their guests. Both speak fluent English as well as German, Afrikan, and other native languages. Heino is particularly interested in anyone wishing a true hunting safari experience, but he is also adept with photographic safaris, as evidenced by my pictures which were mostly all taken in one 3-4 hour excursion. We all comfortably piled into one modified 1968 Ford F-250 pick-up truck with over 400,000 miles on it, and had a ball! Heino offers a running commentary throughout the excursion, describing in detail the animals, their habitats, and behaviors. He is proud of the fact that their preserve is well ahead of others in the country in attempts to repopulate Rhinos, having produced 6 calves in the last year which will be relocated elsewhere.
Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, and it’s probably worth about a hundred thousand given my poor typing speed…
This is the first sunrise/moonset that I experienced at Nomtsas…
This is an early morning shot of some of the guest quarters at Nomtsas… most places in this part of Namibia rely on windmills to pump water for use… also much of the power is generated and stored on site.
This little guy is one of the first creatures that I encountered at Nomtsas, they call him an Erdmaennchen, or “little earth man” roughly translated. It was early morning and around 50 degrees and he was shivering… he would turn and face his belly towards the sun to warm up! It was funny that I was trying to snap lots of pictures of him before he ran off… the Voights have a pet dog and cat that were starting to wander up, and I had visions of him being killed or eaten… turns out that they were all the best of friends!
They Voights have a pair of them that someone had dropped off. This is a picture of the male, and he is incredibly sociable… and these things live to dig!
This is a picture of our group around the truck checking out the view of the farm from a vista… Mr. Voight’s trained eyes were looking for where best to go to find pictures for us…
This was one of the first animals that we came across, and it is an Oryx if I remember correctly… we actually had the meat of one of these at a couple of meals, and it was better than any venison that I’ve tasted. Sorry, to any of you animal lovers and vegans out there… actually, one of our party was a vegetarian and she was accommodated very easily by Heide.
These are Kudu, if I remember correctly, another game animal… they have a built in radiator system in their face and head to deal with heat, and can be very dangerous with their horns.
This is a heard of Wildebeasts.
This is a Springbok, and they were ubiquitous… this picture was actually taken at a place other than Nomtsas.
This was one of the highlights of the tour… we spent quite a bit of time carefully tracking them for a shot, so as not to wear out the little guy. As I said above, Heino is proud of the success that he has had with Rhinos.
A pair of Warthogs, which most farmers just view as burrowing, destructive nuisances…
Zebras, which were fairly hard to get a good shot of, because they are so aware, and fast…
This was a fun highlight of our Safari… Heino took us all on a race in the truck against an Ostrich, and the bird hung right in with us at almost 50 mph and then dusted us! Wish that I could have gotten a picture of it, but this was taken elsewhere, too… You can see the dunes of the deep desert in the background.
This was one of the main treats… we spent a lot of time circling and otherwise probably annoying a herd of about 12 of these guys… it’s incredible how graceful they really are!
Well, that’s pretty much the highlights of my 200 or so animal pics…
I’ll leave you with a picture overlooking one of the natural springs on their preserve. The distances and sizes there are deceptive and mind-boggling… their farm is a total of 56,000 hectares and the perimeter is around 500 km and would take at minimum an entire day to drive around!
Next time, wine from water in the desert…