day 3: etosha national park (namibia)

We woke up at Namutoni rest camp before sunrise, packed the car and hit the road with hot coffees in hand to try and spot some game before moving on out of Etosha.

Our morning had a magical start as we watched black-faced impala and zebra bound out to their morning grazing spot just a few minutes after the sun rose. We watched a group of zebra fend off a hyena, and then watched the hyena track the zebra for ten minutes or so across the big plain before disappearing from view.

We made our way back west across the park, retracing our steps and seeing more oryx, wildebeest, and giraffe.

After leaving the park, we drove another four hours or so to the tiny outpost of Khorixas, beyond which the road turned to dirt. We were slowed by herds of goats and cows in the road; they always managed to run out of the way of the car, but usually not until the last second. We also saw people traveling the same paved and dirt roads by donkey cart. The axel of the cart and wheels were usually from a car.

We stopped at a petrified forest site to see the hardened remains of 250 million-year-old trees. These giant coniferous trees grew in central Africa during an ice age, and as the ice age melted they were washed down to north-central Namibia in floods. They were buried under silt and mud where they landed, outside the town of Khorixas, and after millions of years wind and rain erosion began to uncover the petrified wood. Locals first started finding pieces in the 1950s. One tree is nearly preserved at its full length of over 250 feet.

Our destination for the night was Abu Huab community-run rest camp, where we took a beautiful campsite next to the dusty Huab riverbed. Just a couple of weeks before desert elephants had come through and stepped on a pipe, making one shower unusable.

Black-faced impalas graze a few minutes after sunrise.

A large male black-faced impala.

These zebra were grazing in the same field as the impala. It was interesting to see how many animals chose to graze near each other.

A kori bustard struts through the grass.

A view of zebra walking across the pan under early morning skies.

A troop of helmeted guinea fowl. These guys are common near our house too - we see at least one or two every time we go for a walk.

Oryx, or gemsbok, go grazing. We saw oryx all across the country.

day 2: etosha national park (namibia)

Jennifer and I began our day at the Halali watering hole which is located in shrubland dominated by mopane trees. There was not much to be seen at the watering hole, so we quickly moved on to taking down camp and driving towards the Etosha Pan to step into a world beyond.

The crackled and salty surface of the pan stretched to the horizon where heat waves separated the surface of land from sky. We dug with our fingers into the hardened surface of the pan to find moist clay below which we shaped into a dice and baked under the windshield over the next ten days.

From the pan, we drove to a few different watering holes, seeing many giraffe up close. The giraffe were larger than life and seemed most closely related to diplodachus from The Land Before Time movie rather than any animal we know.

Other interesting sightings included black-faced impala and kudu moving under the mopane trees to keep cool while eating fresh green grass that was shooting up after a recent summer rain.

The day ended with a beautiful sunset that we watched from a fort tower in the Namutoni rest camp. After dark, we watched a few hyenas (or hy-henas, as Bill Petoskey says) walk around the watering hole under a full moon. Our awesome new binoculars were able to give us a sort of low-light night vision that made viewing possible.

Halali watering hole around 7 am.

View over the park from a hill near Halali rest camp.

I threw a rock down this hole and immediately heard a bunch of bats begin flying around and squeaking at me. They were not happy, but luckily they stayed inside.

A beautiful plains wildebeest.

Our first sighting of a white rhino!  White rhinos are larger than black rhinos and have an extra fold of skin under their arms.  They are very big animals.

Turn and face.  These guys want to make sure you know that they know that you are there.

Rhino rears.

Yes, this was our third rhino spotting of the day.  Sorry we can't hand over binoculars, but if you zoom way in you can see a large brown-gray lump in the middle of the picture.  It is resting in the shade of the tree.

The bakkie (Afrikaans for pickup) and the sky.

day 1: etosha national park (namibia)

Here comes part one of a long series of blog posts full of pictures of our road trip north to Namibia! We had an absolutely amazing time, and can't wait to share the whole trip. We drove from Windhoek (after a short flight from Cape Town) north to Etosha National Park, where we spent three nights. We then went to a region called Damaraland, west of Etosha, between the park and the coast, for two nights. Then on to the Skeleton Coast for one night in the bustling vacation town of Swakopmund, and back into the desert for three nights in the Naukluft mountains to do some hiking. We finished the trip with two nights in Sesriem to see the sand dunes at Sossussvlei. We got to watch the sun rise on Christmas morning over the dunes.

More on that later! Here's a description of what we did and what we saw on our first day.

We flew to Windhoek, the capital, picked up our rental car (a "4x4" - pickup with 4-wheel drive, equipped with a rooftop tent and camping gear) and braved the shopping mall in the center of town on the last Saturday morning before Christmas to buy groceries before heading up the road to Etosha.

We drove north on the B1, one of only a handful of paved roads in the country, to Okakuejo (oh-kah-kwey-yo), a camp and lodge just inside the southeastern gate of Etosha National Park. We had pretty high expectations for our Etosha trip - we'd heard it is in the same range of parks as Kruger National Park - and we weren't disappointed.

The park is oriented around a giant (mostly) dry lake bed called the Etosha Pan. Once a year (or every few years) this pan fills with a few inches of water, and giant flocks of flamingos come to visit. We didn't see that, although we were there during rainy season, but we did see lots of heat shimmers that looked like water! And tons of other wildlife.

We got into the park and were pleasantly surprised to see a bull (male) elephant near the side of the road. After setting up camp and cooking dinner, we spent about two hours at the floodlit water hole where we saw lots of action: jackal, owl, two male lions, another bull elephant, and a black rhinoceros. 

The next morning, we got up and took our first game drive. We were so excited to see the many grazing animals and some bigger guys too.

We had our first big animal sighting (aside from 5 warthogs, goats and cows on the highway, and a red hartebeest and two giraffe on the road from the airport) just a few minutes after we got into the park! A big bull (male) elephant with half a tusk missing.

After watching a jackal chase an owl for about 15 minutes at the water hole, we were thrilled to see this guy and his friend come in, drink, and play for about ten minutes. If you can't quite make him out yet, check the next picture.

Yep, a male lion. Young males sometimes roam around together. We watched them lay around at the water hole, then get up and slowly stalk away. One turned and let out a low roar, which was truly amazing to hear.

The excitement at the waterhole continued that night: the two lions moved off with a roar (literally, so cool!) and a minute or two later, this guy moved in. Our second bull elephant!

And THEN we saw this guy! A black rhino! Really. It was a big night.

The elephant moves off under the full moon.

We set off on our morning game drive the next day and saw giraffe barely out of the gate.

A jackal's den! We counted four pups. Can you pick out this one?

Herds of springbok (the namesake of South Africa's rugby team) grazed on this flat landscape.