Namibia on TV

Yesterday and today, Animal Planet was showing part of their series on, well I don't know what, there were a couple segments on Namibia and a guy riding a camel in Australia. Last year I was in Namibia and I highly recommend it, but why does TV have to fake it and make it seem so dramatic? For viewers I suppose, but to me it just cheapens the show. Let me point out a few things.

• The supposedly rare pelicans that are difficult to photograph have in fact been conditioned by the whale watching boats in Walvis bay to fly alongside the boats and grab small fish tossed into the air. The Animal Planet guy was hyperventilating and raving about the rare opportunity. Don't get me wrong, the whale watching trip we went on was just great, including whales, dolphins, pelicans, and seals. But even I got a great picture of a pelican flying alongside the boat.
  
• Speaking of seals, the same segment was exclaiming about the close contact with same, see above, the excursion boats all feed them. Regarding their colony on the beach, it's just a bunch of noisy smelly animals. You can drive right up to look if you want.
  
• The skeleton coast, north from Walvis bay along the Atlantic is a barren and scenic place, but including comments about the hundreds of ships and thousands who died on the inhospitable shores is just plain wrong. In fact there were ships lost, but guess what, sailors learned over the years to avoid the hazard. There was a famous wreck in 1896 that I'd like to read more about where some of the crew did survive. What a choice, the sea full of undrinkable water or the desert that seems to stretch on forever? But today, there is one visible wreck that you will see photographed at every possible angle.
  
• That Russian trawler they always show as an example of the skeleton coast wrecks is not really on the skeleton coast. It's between Walvis Bay and Swakopmund along a well travelled highway which is also know for teenage drag races. And it didn't run aground in a fierce storm in the fog, it had been in the anchorage and during a strong wind was blown to the current location, the crew had maybe been into the vodka and awoke to their new location.
  
• The guano platform (picture) just north of Walvis bay is something I really only learned about after coming home. I love it when some crackpot idea turns out to be brilliant. In the 1930's a guy decided to build a platform offshore just north of Walvis Bay. Be sure to follow that link, it's a great story. The idea was to give the birds a safe place to nest and then collect the guano. It yields 650 or so tons a year of high grade fertilizer with little effort except for some maintenance and collection. That's a business I could get behind. I give animal planet credit for good coverage of this.
• Further inland, the show went to the Okuakuejo tourist camp (as they call it) in Etosha National Park. Really a wonderful experience but they had to pump it up. One segment showed the presenter and a guide next to a seemingly remote waterhole, risking their lives to observe the rare animals. It looked to me like they were right along the low wall and line of benches that separate the chalets from the waterhole. I wonder how they got all the tourists to clear out so they could make their shot?
• One last thing, about those rough and dangerous roads of Etosha Park, they are pretty smooth dirt and gravel and not a problem at all. I was driving a small SUV but a Honda Civic could have done just as well. But the TV guys had to have a Land Cruiser with all the trappings, I wonder how loud the local guides were laughing.

Enjoy some biltong on me and watch the show but remember, they're going for the emotional response, not the reality.