Sebastian
Today was full of driving, learning, and seeing some awesome animals! Before we even left the campsite, we drove to the Bushman Small Paradise. It was a site of Bushmen paintings of an eland, a rhino, and an elephant. These painting are at least 2000 years old. The ink (made of blood and ostrich egg) has withstood the sun, heat, and natural elements! They had faded, but you could still tell what they were.
We stopped several times during the day to examine and learn about several plants. The first was the butter tree, so called because it looks like butter. This succulent tree is actually a member of the grape family. That was really interesting to me because the tree looks nothing like a grape vine!
Our next plant was a cactus called Wolfmilk. It gets its name because its milk is poisonous to anyone that eats it. The milk comes out when the plant is cut. Burger said that the plant causes many deaths in Namibia because tourists do not know the danger of its milk.
A plant that we saw a lot during our drive today was the African Star Chestnut tree. It was really cool because it has white bark to reflect the sunlight, but the whiteness of the tree depends on the amount of sunlight the tree is exposed to. If it's exposed to lots of sunlight, the bark will be blindingly white, but if it's not exposed to as much sunlight, it will be a light brown.
Another plant we saw today was welwitschia mirabilis, the national plant of Namibia. It is unique because it is the only plant in its family. It only produces two leaves in its lifetime and each leaf only grows 5 mm per year (at most). These plants can live up to 2000 years! It's not a very attractive plant, but its uniqueness makes it one of the neatest plants we've seen so far!
After we stopped and ate lunch, we walked to a site of Bushman engravings. This site has the highest number of engravings in one place in the world. These engravings are 6000 years old. They were carved into the sandstone using the quartz stones that litter the ground. Rhinos, kudos, ostriches, giraffes, and springbok covered the walls. It truly was an amazing site. These people took the time 6000 years ago, when survival must have been extremely difficult, to decorate the stones with art. The art may have served a further purpose than decoration, though. Carvings of the footprints of giraffes, ostriches, and other animals covered the stones too. These may have been used for hunting education to aid in tracking and identifying prey. Regardless, it provides us with a beautiful record of the animals that lived there 6000 years ago and the people that lived among them.
But the most exciting part about today was the animals we saw and our proximity to them. The first really exciting animal we saw was a giraffe. We were less than 20 yards from him. He did not even seem to be afraid. He stood and posed perfectly while all 25 of us got some great pictures! We also got to see some more Mountain zebras and some kudu, but they were too far away to photograph well. The coolest thing (and in my opinion, the highlight of the trip so far), was the elephant sighting! Burger spotted him and after giving us strict instructions, led us to within 30 yards of this awesome animal. It was a thrilling feelings--partially because of the animal's majesty and partially because of the thrill of the danger. Burger made us be completely quiet, approach it in a single file line, and take pictures in groups of five. Like the giraffe, the elephant was very patient and photogenic. Later, at the campsite, Burger told us that the elephant's name was Sebastian and he had killed three Italian tourists. He recognized Sebastian based on his location and his broken tusk. It's strange to think that such a beautiful animal could inflict such harm--thank goodness we had a great tour guide!
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