Giraffe and elephant

Leaving Twyfelfontain towards the north, I started heading into the more remote areas of the Damaraland. For quite a while I just drove through the beautiful landscape, when I suddenly saw them. Three giraffes standing right next to the road, eating. One of them was a bit scared of my car and quickly ran to hide behind a tree (not very successful), the other two didn't really care. When I decided I had taken enough pictures of my first giraffes, I continued hearing towards the Palmwag lodge. Shortly before the lodge, I had to pass the veterinary fence, separating the parts with and without foot-and-mouth disease (at least the parts where it used to be a problem). Took quite some complicated paperwork (as often), but finally I was allowed to pass through. What I had originally considered as clouds in the area, arriving at the lodge u found out, that the whole area was covered in smoke, you couldn't really see very far. Due to the strong winds, the smoke from a bush fire quite far away in the western part of the Etosha park had made it this far. The lodge was in the middle if nowhere, and due to missing fences, I wad told not to walk around on my own after dark. Well, that was the official version I had to sign. In reality no one really cared and saw it as a risk, ad long as I stayed in the lodge area. Next morning all the smoke was gone again, and I went on my first game drives (one for sunrise, one for sunset). Sitting in an open landrover (very cold especially in the morning and with the wind), we went on some tracks through the bushland, looking for animals. And we found: lots of zebra, springbock, oryx, a few giraffe, jackal, ostrich, stenbock, one kudu, and even some eagles. Unfortunately, mist of them were quite far away, but I guess that's normal for wild animals. And no elephants. The elephants here in this area are specially adopted desert elephants, but therefore also quite rare and shy, so I wasn't too surprised that we didn't find any. But one can hope... After the second night at Palmwag I made my way to the next destination, further east, close to the western part of the Etosha park. On the way down the Grootberg pass (driving a pass like this and through the mountains on gravel roads is a quite interesting experience), I finally saw them (after some help from other tourists): a group of desert elephants, slowly making their way along the hill and eating. They even had two young ones with them. My first elephants! (And shorty afterwards I passed a 'cautions elephants' sign, which looked run over by an elephant.)