Travelogue: Etosha

Etosha park has pictorial signs to help you find your way around. If you want a good night’s sleep don’t turn right.

There is a good history of the park here….

The day was full of driving and spotting what we could see…. they don’t have trackers on the animals and it’s really whatever happens to be there… Here are a couple of ostrich (both males) the females are more brown and less striking

Oryx and a wildebeest debating who would get which bit of grass

There is, again, lots of green here which has been very unusual because of the recent rains which have been awaited for a couple of years.

This was one of the permitted getting out stops. This also had the worst loo that we visited… a draughty hole in the ground with no running water. However with the possibilities of lions about going behind a bush was not an alternative here.

Amazing flower I spotted - the branch it was on looked dead but the flower continued to bloom

This is the salt pan and there is information here. To give you an idea of scale the Etosha pan is around 4800 km². Etosha National Park is 20,000km² and Wales has a total area of 22779km². Therefore there is a chance that you won’t see very much if it’s all in North Wales.

The picture below is of a leopard with 2 cubs. We never saw the cubs but our guide later forwarded someone else’s picture who had seen them. She is resting on the dried mud in the ‘window’ of the overgrowth. She is hard to see with her camouflage

This is a clearer picture as we had a better view as we were able to manoeuvre as different vehicles came and went

This is our room - love the way they fold the towels. Must try harder with our guests!

We saw a lot of different bokkies - springbok, eland, oryx, hartebeest...

A smattering of zebra

And we stayed in this camp at Halali for the next night...

Each camp has a waterhole which is great for spotting things without having to drive over bumpy gravel roads

Woody and I returned to the waterhole after supper and we saw jackal, hyena and as we were about to give up to sleep for the night we ended up seeing 5 rhino - 2 mothers and babies and 1 male

Up and about early the next day we got to see giraffe who were wandering around on the airstrip

If I remember rightly this is a hartebeest because its horns make a heart shape when you look at it straight on

We saw a lot of springbok. They are actually marsupials (see the Latin name because they have a pouch. This is around their tales which they can open it and face it towards the sun as it is white underneath and it helps reflect the heat away from them

A lonely tree on the edge of the Etosha pan

And we were greeted again by some marvellous giraffe. Why did the giraffe cross the road?

To visit the chicken...

We had some fabulous views including this lilac breasted roller which are unbelievably coloured and look like a child has been let loose with the crayons and the bird guide book. We also saw lots of kori bustard but sadly no photos of these huge birdies.

Trying to make sure we didn’t get eaten alive by mossies though with nets and lots of repellant spray we did well

And on Woody’s birthday no less (after many rounds of Happy Birthday at breakfast) we found the elusive elephants!

They were heading to the waterhole at the camp so we spent some time watching the large group crossing the road

There were smaller ones

This lovely young lady was most curious about us...

And even gave our windscreen a good snotting!

There were even tinier tots but Woody has the better photos with his camera

After they left we went back to the water hole and watched some arrive… as soon as they saw the water they ran towards it

I have a video of one elephant pushing another in and an older elephant splitting the pair up

In you go! splosh

To celebrate the birthdays we had cocktail night which got a bit noisier as the alcohol was consumed - gin, vodka, cointreau, whisky and some fruit juices...