27. 10.:Flights seemed to last forever (going Vienna - London - Johannisburg - Windhoek) but finally we arrived in Windhoek - unfortuantely one of our bags didn't. Since there was nothing to do but wait for it to arrive we took the night train to Swakopmund. 5 Minutes after we left the station, we had to be brought back and our train was linked to another one which finally went west to Swakopmund.

28.10.: Early in the morning we arrived at Swakopmund and were welcomed by Stephan, our supervisor. After a short breakfast we went to town to do some shopping. Swakopmund is a tourist town and it's inhabited by lots of german-speaking people (descendents of the Germans who settled here almost 100 years ago). The little town is very nice and pittoresque but lots of buildings could be standing in Germany exactly as they are (only the palmtrees diturb the scene :o). In the afternoon, we went to Cape Cross, where Stephan, Nicky (our collegue from London and also a PhD student) and Stephano (the vet from the London Zoo) had already been working for 2 weeks.

29.10.: In the morning, we went to see the seal colony. In the middle of november usually all the seal pubs are born. In the middle of the colony, some jackals were searching for food. In the afternoon, we started helping with trapping jackals. Once in the trap, the jackals were anaesthetised, then examined (EGK, blood pressure, blood/ skin samples taken) and finally ear-tagged. Then the jackal was released again. Most jackals we caught during nightime, which made the whole thing very demanding and we only went to bed early in the morning.

30.10.: Again we trapped in the afternoon. Late in the evening, we already wanted to quit and go home, we found instead of the slim and small jackal a big brown hyena in the trap. Quite a piece of work to anaesthetise this big animal to get it out of the trap and release it !

31.10.:Stefano, Flo and I went to henties Bay, the next village (about 1 hour by car) for buying food supplies. For lunch, we tried some Oryx (called "Gemsbock" in Namibia) in the "Spitzkoppe Restaurant" which was very nice. On the way back home, we had our weekly shower at the Mile 72 camping - pure luxury ! :o) In the evening, we trapped again, but only caught one little female jackal.

01.11.: In the morning, we had some time to do observations. The jackal population at Cape Cross is very large due to the food supplies from the seal colony. The social background of this population is not known yet and part of Nicky's PhD. In the evening, we invited all the Cape Cross people to a party to thank them for their help and cooperation - and it got really late :o)

02.11.: Not very awake we did some more jackal observations. The afternoon held a surprise for us: Flo's bag arrived. Thanks to British Airways it was only a week to late.... :o)

03.11.: Since we had to leave Cape Cross again, we started to pack all the boxes, digged out the traps and cleaned all equipment. In the colony, the first seal cups were born during the last days, a little earlier than normally.

04.11.: The first part of the boxes was brought to Henties Bay, so we couldn't do a lot at this day. Still, there was a surprise in the afternoon: at the bay of the Cape Cross Lodge, a whale suddenly appeared. Soon later, we could see a small fin besides of the big one...

05.11.: Good-bye to Cape Cross... we first went to Henties Bay to store the rest of the boxes, then we went on to Swakopmund to buy some supplies. In the afternoon, we went to Walvis Bay and then on to the Namib Naukluft Park. On the way to Ganab, where we slept that night, we finally saw "Africa, as you know it &qout; - ostriches, oryx, springbock,...

06.11.: Early in the morning we started for Gobabeb since it's quite far from Ganab and it's getting very hot during daytime. Again, we saw lots of animals - this time also two warthogs. Finally, after a seemingly neverending car ride through the gravel desert, we saw the water tower of Gobabeb. In the afternoon, we immediately went to the desert for a "sundowner" - which is grabbing some drinks, going to the desert and enjoying the sunset :o) Actually a really good idea, the sunsets at the Namib Desert are marvellous !

07.11.: Unfortunately we missed the sunrise only by minutes - but we still did a morning walk to the desert. During daytime, we had to do some paperwork for our project outlines. In the afternoon we went to the desert with Joh Henschel, the director of Gobabeb - and got stuck in the sand. After some digging we managed to go on and we were back by the time dinner was ready since Inge, Joh's wife, did a marvellous "potje", one of the traditional dishes of Namibia.

08.11.: Again, we started in the relatively cool morning hours. We went upstream the dried out river valley to search two groups of baboons, of which Stepahn needed some faecal samples. We saw lots of animals in the river valley - warthogs, oryx, klippspringers - but no baboons ! At early afternoon, we gave up and went back home and there, just minutes of the spot where we entered the river valley, we found the baboons. I'm pretty sure the had hidden all the morning from us :o). In the evening, we enjoyed a "sundowner" at Joh's balcony, discussing our work with him.

09.11.: Again time for a good bye. We drove north to Tsoabis Leopard Nature Park, where a collegue of Stephan is working at the baboons there. Tsoabis was very nice, but sleep wasn't since there were lots of mosquitoes there and it was very hot and humid during night. Maybe also the roaring of the leopard lady in heat at the cage in the center of the station didn't really enhance our sleeping :o)

10.11.: Our last day in Namibia - we drove back to Windhoek leaving Tsoabis at 5 a.m. since it's a five-and-a-half hours drive to Windhoek. At Karibib, we finally reached a tared street which made our ride a lot faster than the gravel roads just before :o). In Windhoek, we stored our stuff in a locker and then we already had to go to the airport. Fortunately, it was only a good-bye for about 2 months...