Etosha

The Etosha Park is just amazing. After we got our camp settled at Okakuejo (name of rest camp), we went for our first game drive. At Etosha you can go on self-guided safaris, so we just drove ourselves around this huge park (it takes hours to drive across it) on bumpy, gravel roads. On our first drive, we were shocked by how many animals we saw. We didn’t just see a few animals, we saw herds of springbok, large families of kudu, zebras and lots of other animals just on the side of the road. At first, we stopped each time we saw a group of animals, but after just a few minutes we realized that the whole park was like this. The animals like the Etosha pan (an ancient dried up lake) because of the salty sand , and the fresh springs that feed the water holes. We could drive right up to the water holes and look for animals. There is even a drive where you can go right out into the pan, and feel the salty sand (a little bit like the salt flats by Salt Lake City, but not so salty and definitely not bleak at all). Even though this is one of the busiest times of the year, we usually were alone at the waterholes, and would see cars only occasionally driving around.

At our first water hole, we saw a family of giraffe, who were accompanied also by wildebeest, springbok, gemsok, wildebeast and zebra! At the next waterhole, we saw a group of elephants – 5 adult elephants, two kid elephants and two baby elephants. A number of other animals were at the waterhole too. As we were driving back to our campsite, we were fortunate to see a family of lions right by the side of the road. The male lion was on one side, and two females and some cubs were on the other wide. We watched for about 10 minutes, and the lions just sat there. Finally the male lion yawned, and lay down in the grass. As soon as he was flat on the ground, he was impossible to see because he blended right into the grass. The animals behave SO differently than any of these large animals we’ve seen before, even at the most naturalistic type of zoo in the United States. Aside from the Elephant and the Lion, the other animals looked to be constantly on edge. While the cars didn’t seem to bother them, they were constantly on guard, and would jump at signs of predators. It seemed like they spent most of their time looking around to see if someone was going to come jump on them.

A highlight of Okakuejo is that there is a floodlit water hole right at the camp. The animals don’t seem to notice/mind the lighting. So, you can sit on a bench at the campsite, and watch wild animals just thirty meters away. At night, we watched elephant, zebras, giraffe, a bunch of antelope and a black rhino come by the water hole. It was the best show we’ve ever seen. The next day, we saw even more animals at the Okakuejo water hole. We tried to estimate how many animals we could see at one time, and we estimated that there were over 500 animals in view at any one time, maybe even more. We saw thousands and thousands of animals. Simply amazing!
The worst part of the campground was that there were wild jackals running through the camp. Liz was very mad that one of her jackals stole her sandal and ran off with it! The campsites were very nice though, and all have a braai pit (aka a bar-b-q), and they have camp kitchens for washing dishes. Many of the people have full bush safari equipment in these camps (including tents that fold out so you can sleep on top of your car), but we did just fine with our two small tents and the back of the combi.

In the several days we were there, we really couldn’t believe just how many animals we saw. We took notes on some animals of these animals – and I’m sure there were more than this. And this doesn’t even BEGIN to cover the birds.
Springbok
Gemsbok
Steenbok
Dik Dik
Hartebeest
Wildebeest
Black Faced Impala
Ostrich
Hyena
Zebras
Kudu
Black-backed jackals
Cape foxes
Elephant
Giraffes
Black rhino
White rhino
Lions
Warthog

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