Day 10--Sesrium to Homeb

Solitaire

This morning at 4:50 AM, I was awakened by Dr. Davis telling Burger that he needed to be airlifted from the campsite to the nearest hospital. He believed that he either had appendicitis, a UTI, or a kidney stone. He was airlifted to Windhoek and we found out that he had a kidney stone. He will rejoin us in two days.

When we stopped to buy groceries in Solitaire, a small town famous for its apple pie, we also grabbed some lunch. I had a game burger (what exactly the meat was, I'm not sure), and followed it up with a slice of apple pie. The apple pie was some of the best I've ever had. The little town was very photogenic; it was full of old cars and cacti.

While driving to our next campsite, we encountered a new landscape--the savanna. As we move further north in Namibia, there's more life. The savanna is covered in brown grasses that appear to be dead called Bushmen grass. Because of their presence, more animals can survive. As a result, we saw more animals today than any other day so far: jackals, vultures, ostriches, Mountain zebras, and warthogs. I was most excited about the Mountain zebras because they are endemic to Namibia and fairly rare; only a few thousand still exist.

We also passed the Tropic of Capricorn today. It is special because on the 23rd of December, you will have no shadow.

We visited the Kuiseb River as well. The landscape was unique-looking due to the separation of Pangea.

Our campsite, Homeb, again has no running water or electricity, but it's still nice. There's lots of trees to provide much needed shade. There's trees here because we're camping next to a river. Rive now it's just a river bed because the river is dry. Earlier today, everyone was laying out in the middle of the river bed watching the sun set (which was beautiful, I must say!).