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Sound recording & camping in the African wilderness – Part 2: Namibia & South Africa

Read part I about recording & camping in Botswana here

Namibia is a land of extremes: huge empty deserts with glowing red sand dunes and rock formations shaped as if placed by giants, a wild coastline littered with shipwrecks, whale carcasses and immense seal colonies, lakes and salt pans attracting all the wildlife that you’d expect from an African country, and lush green tree and shrub savanna in the Caprivi strip bordering Botswana, Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Its natural extremities not withstanding, this is a country easily traversed by car, boasting endless straight-lined gravel roads through its vast expanses of nothingness and national parks. Unlike Botswana, a 4×4 vehicle is for many areas not even a necessity, though having one opens up parts of the country that would otherwise be inaccessible. As for our trip specifically, we only needed the 4-wheel drive engaged on a couple of trails in Namib-Naukluft national park.

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Grey Seal pup recordings

Recordings of Grey Seal pups in the dunes by Horsey beach, Norfolk, UK – December 2012.

These seals are about 3 to 5 weeks old; 3 weeks after they are born, their mother leaves them and they crawl from the beach into the dunes to shelter against the wind whilst they wait to shed their fur, after which they dive into the sea. They tend to leave for the sea to get food when they are about 6 weeks old.

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