Fri Aug 07 2026
Mount Etjo, day 2
Dinosaur footprints.
A relaxed start today, after a broken night’s sleep (due to a demented duck that decided to quack at the top of its voice all through the night!)
After breakfast, we headed along the camp track to a walk that allegedly took the intrepid explorer to some dinosaur footprints. We trekked up the hill (a gentle walk compared to Waterberg Plateau), and after about 3km, we got to the dinosaur footprints. At first, quite underwhelming - a big slab of sandstone with stones all over it, but on closer inspection, people had used the stones to put rings around the footprints.
Some of them were very clear, and others looked like they were probably just rings of stones put there by comedic previous visitors as a joke!
They are thought to date from between 190 - 219 million years ago (the Early Jurassic period). They originate from medium to large bipedal, three‑toed theropod and they were made in soft, clayey sand that later lithified under overlying sediments, preserving them as trace fossils (ichnofossils) source.
The walk was just under 6km, and by the time we got back to camp, we were hungry and ready to chill! We had some lunch then headed to the safari lodge for some R&R!
We decided to book in at the restaurant on the way past reception and they offered to pick us up from camp and drive us there and back which was nice.
We spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool (not much swimming as it was so cold, but Edie and Mima seemed impervious to the cold!)
We headed back to camp and waited for our ride. They eventually turned up at 19:30 (the drivers had all been out on safari drives so we had to wait for them to get back and drop off their passengers).
When we got to the restaurant dinner was served in a different part of the lodge that we hadn’t seen. It was a buffet of braaied meats, salads etc. The room itself was a large round building with a roaring fire pit in the middle with chairs around it. We were taken to our table and had some lovely salmon canapes waiting for us. They explained that when the main buffet opened we could have as much as we wanted from the meats and salad bar (that sounded like a challenge to me!) and dessert would be served at the table.
Challenge accepted.
The meats included some beautiful kudu steaks, boerewors, impala in the pot, chicken (for the less adventurous or greedy) with rice, maize polenta, sweet potatoes and various other dishes. We all went up and got stuck in, everyone trying something new. I went up for seconds, and probably shouldn’t have had two kudu steaks the second time round. I was stuffed by the time the pudding arrived (banoffee roulade), but was able to force some down for a satisfying end to the day!