Our African Adventure: Day 10, 11, & 12 Etosha National Park

Sunset at Etosha

LEON: Not much to do today. Everyone “slept in” until almost 0800. Even the shutterbugs couldn’t find anything to get excited about, except..... Today is the day we go to Etosha. It is the first of the big game parks that we will visit. We have been told that they have four of the big five - lion, rhinoceros, giraffe and elephants. A late start, a short drive to a small village, labelled as a city on the maps, with something just short of a super highway leading to it - a thin line of asphalt running off into the distance. I can’t remember the name of the village, nor could I pronounce it if I could. But they had a great bakery, good coffee, and an INTERNET Cafe. We would have one hour to shop, buy supplies, get coffee and a goodie, and go to surf the web. We chose the Internet cafe with the hope of multi-tasking as we were there. After a short delay, Barb is on the internet, filing our blog. For once we were ready and even had all (or most) of the pix chosen. We had two blog postings ready to file, with stories of fun, and adventurous days. But time runs quickly on the web. Barb had time to post just one, then a quick check of both our e-mails, while we sip our coffee and eat our bread as we did them all. Too quickly, the time is up and we must return to the bus.

But soon, we are at Etosha. No one has noticed that it is long past lunch time. For we are now in the game park. The first sighting is of Zebra (please pronounce it “sebrah” as in debra). The truck stops. The overhead hatch doors are already opened. All cameras are at hand, all batteries charged, heads spring into the overhead hatches. Chuck, who is fast becoming our group’s favorite wit, likens this to a prairie dog village with all of the “prairie dog” heads popping up out of their mounds.

"Prairie Dogs" looking out the truck's roof.

"Prairie Dogs" from inside the truck.

Soon, wildebeest are sighted, then a giraffe, then oryx, and more. But never an elephant. The truck stops 15 or 20 times en route to the entry gate of the compound we will sleep in. We are sleeping in the home of the animals, and we are the ones that will be caged in. Adjacent to this compound is a watering hole. As we finally enter the compound, and park the truck, our guide Brett, tells us of the watering hole and of how the animals come there to drink. At the mention of this phenomena, and the chance to finally see an elephant, the shutterbugs begin their stampede to the watering hole. Except for me of course, who somehow ends up being so far behind, I have to ask directions. But I find the observation area for the watering hole. The sign asks for silence from us. Two large elephants are standing motionless beside the water. During the time we are there, I will see one of them lift one foot, but no other motion. It is the heat of the day. Despite that there are oryx, zebra, springbok, giraffe, and jackals. The jackal is hungry, but we will not see him eat today. All of the animals are in good health and will not become prey while we are there. Barb is entranced. She is shooting movies and stills. Our new camera has an unusual feature in that it can capture still images as you also are videoing. We have gotten some great shots with that feature!

It's hard when you have such a long neck to get a drink of water.

For me, I have seen enough using the binoculars and observing the animals intensely. Tomorrow, we will go on two different game drives. I return to the camp site to erect our tent. I discover a away for a single person to erect and attach the poles. It works great for me until a wind arises before the tent is connected to the poles. One of our neighbors, from Down Under, comes quickly to help me. BUT, just a moment later, as they are themselves doing the ritual tent-erection dance of the overland tent dwellers, their poles spring up and then apart as if from an explosion. All but one of the poles are quickly recovered, but that one takes an over hour to find, lodged like a broken branch 20 feet up in the nearest tree!

Barb taking photos of the elephants at the waterhole.

Later that afternoon, the truck returns from the afternoon game drive with some happy shutterbugs. They have seen a few of the animals that everyone wants to photograph. But the highlight of the first day will be the waterhole in the evening. This cage that we humans must stay in has bungalows, restaurants, swimming pool ,bar, gift shop, and even a post office. It is a compound on the African savannah in the midst of all of the wild game. But the prime attraction will not be these normal amenities. It is the large waterhole that sits just outside of the human compound. Here the animals come every evening to find water. There are promises of Elephants and jackals and others. And everyone is very excited for there are rumors of Lion and even a Black Rhino! Towards dusk, we all go to the waterhole viewing area. There are both wooden and stone benches, and even a multi level viewing pavilion. A stone wall keeps the humans from the waterhole. And multiple fences, sturdy and electrified, keep the animals from coming to feast on the humans.

As we approach, it is apparent that all those viewing are excited. There are great noises of elephant sounds, but we haven’t enough experience to know what that can mean. Soon, we see. It is a herd of elephants - male, female, children, large, small, and babies. There are over two dozen of them! Mixed among them around the water are zebra, springbok, jackals, and many more. Tonight we will see lions stalking their prey, but we do not get to see a kill. And at 8:35 pm, precisely on schedule, as he does every night, the VERY large black rhino appears. As exciting as this seems, tomorrow night we will see three of them at about the same time. But there is one that always appears, at approximately 8:30, every night of the year.

At the waterhole

The signs ask for silence. But people are excited. What one hears mixed in with the sounds of the animals is the soft buzz of people whispering to each other, trying to respect the animals, and each other, but unable to contain their excitement without sharing it with others. The sound of cameras clicking and shuttering are all around me. There is even the occasional flash which surprisingly does not seem to affect the animals at all. However, unless they are in a crowd, all of the animals are very cautious as they sip water. First they take a little, then look around. Wait. Then a little more. This seems to be a characteristic of them all, predator or prey. Personally, I am quite happy with the stoutness of the fence, the stone walls, and particularly the electrified fence that looks like high voltage line. I do not need to participate in the waterhole experience to understand the food chain here, and where I might fit into it.

We spent two more days in Etosha. One more night at the same camp, then another night at a different one. That second one was the original fort built here in the Namibian savannah lands by the Germans. Our group goes on morning and afternoon game drives each day. There is an option to stay back and enjoy the pool, but no true shutterbug is able to overcome his obsession with photography and do that very sensible thing. And of course, their trusty sidekicks such as myself, feel compelled to come along to keep them from falling off the roof of the truck in an attempt at that perfect photo.

BARB: Words are difficult to describe what we have been seeing. The trip so far has been wonderful and we saw some great things (petroglyphs, learned about the San people, visited a cheetah reserve, etc.) but now we are truly on a ‘Safari’. We are seeing all sorts of amazing animals in their habitat, roaming in the wild. We are not at the zoo.

On the drive to Etosha, we finally were seeing big game, the animals that we think of when we say “Africa”. Imagine our excitement as we saw our first giraffe and zebra, wildebeest, hartebeest, steenbok, springbok, gemsbok (oryx), jackals, hyena, different impala, ostrich, honey badger (looks like our skunks), and many varieties of birds. It was a long drive because we had to stop all along the route to take photos.

Giraffe and a Springbok

Giraffe, Oryx & Zebra

Wildebeest

Oryx, also called Gemsbok

Hartebeest

A dusty Black Rhino

As soon as we arrived at the camp, we headed straight to the waterhole where we saw our first elephants, several lions and a rhino. We have arrived.

Cute Baby Elephant

We are living a nomadic life and because we finally were staying in one place for more than one night, I washed laundry and we scrubbed out the tent to get rid of our accumulation of Namib Desert orange sand.

We are calling Springbok “seagulls” now because we see so many of them (thousands) and don’t even mention them when we pass by them. It is interesting that we used to get so excited when we’d see any animal and now we are blasé with almost anything, except maybe lions, rhino, elephant or giraffe. Actually, on our game drive yesterday afternoon, we even passed up elephants and giraffe because they weren’t close enough for us - they have to be worthy of a good photo shot.

Etosha (Great White Place) is full of ‘pans’ which from a distance, look like a mirage Consequently, we think that a waterhole might be ahead with animals drinking. But yesterday we came upon something that looked like an ocean. But it was the “Etosha Pan”, 1,400 square miles of dry, white, and clay-like (it floods when it rains). These pans, or mirages, are so realistic that when we finally do see water, we are certain that it must be another pan.

The Etosha Pan

Ebron, our chef, frying our group in the Etosha Pan.

We are with a fun and interesting group of people from all over the world. At night we sit around the campfire telling stories and jokes. Actually the jokes are getting old and we could use a new supply. It gets pretty bad when someone starts a joke with “Have I told you the one about ...” and after several people say “Yes”, they continue on with the joke.

Today we are headed to the Caprivi Strip in northern Namibia, bordered also by Botswana, Angola, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. You really need to look at the map. There, we will camp along the Kavango river. We are hoping to see our first Hippo!

Last night we went to sleep with the roar of the lions. It sounded like thy were on the prowl for food. It’s loud and close and makes you want to be sure that the roaring lion is OUTSIDE the fence. This morning we woke to the sounds of elephants bellowing. But we have become so used to it that at first we didn’t even notice. However, in the pre-dawn quiet of this early morning, it finally penetrated to our brains, that this was not the ferry tooting its horn in the fog, but the wonderful sound of elephants.