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Etosha National Park, Namibia

We are now in Etosha National Park, which translates to The White Place. It’s 22,935 sq km in size and 4730sq km of it is salt pans. Both of our game drives over the two days are done in our truck. It works well as all the large windows can be drawn down, we are much higher up off the ground and the truck can go anywhere without issues. Elosha’s landscape is very different to Chobe N.P as its has a lot of sparse, vast landscape with fewer trees. It makes for easier game viewing. Etosha is known for the concentrated amount of giraffes and the 86 natural and manmade waterholes. Etosha is where David Attenborough filmed that famous giraffe fight and where the baby elephant who died and the mother had to make the decision to leave it occurred.

Day One: On the third water hole of the day, we came across the first animal worth stopping for, meaning not the thousands of antelope in about 20 varieties. We saw a giraffe at this waterhole and waited about 10 mins for it to take in some water. Watching a giraffe drinking is something very awkward because it has to bend its long legs in a weird way. A giraffe’s tongue is 45cm and it only bends down for 30-40 seconds at a time before it gets dizzy. Namibian giraffes grow to 5metres tall and 28 years of age. The older they get the darker in colour they go, to almost black heads. They are the only animal who gives birth to a baby with horns built into its skull. Male giraffes eat higher on trees and have shiny horns and females eat the lower branches and have fluffy horns.
Over the next hour, 7 giraffes, 3 oryx, 20 impala, 15 zebras and 2 elephants all came for a drink. The two male elephants starting having a bit of a play fight but then I wondered why his 5th leg (which is literally the size of a human leg) came for a very big stiff look at the world. I’m unsure what happened next but if an elephant swings its truck into ‘himself’ and blows… what would you call that? But seriously, seeing all of those wild animals all having an afternoon drink was pretty mind blowing!

Only minutes after we got back on the road a herd of over 50 elephants came past us. Three of them came as close as 1 metre from the truck. Elephants eat 270kg of food per day over the 18 hours that they are awake. They live to about 60 or however long they keep their molars. Molars are replaced 6 times. As soon as they go, they starve to death, normally among the soft grasses which become elephant graveyards. Elephants are up there with my favourite animals. They communicate via infrasound, the sound below our threshold of hearing. In Etosha certain atmospheric conditions allow elephants to send infrasonic sounds great distances. Under a veil called a ‘thermal inversion’ elephants bounce sound off the inversion sending it more than a hundred kilometres further at certain times of the day. At sunset and sunrise for example, the inversion is sometimes so clearly visible that you’ll see a line in the sky. Sound waves made by elephant’s feet can be detected by elephants up to 32km away. Knowing that information makes it even more amazing that although 50 elephants passed us by, there was no sound as they are ridiculously silent. The only noise to be heard is when they crash through the trees or bushes. They are very placid creatures, and it is so nice to see all with tusks. The elephants in Etosha are the biggest in Africa (shoulder span of 4.2m wide) yet their tusks are some of the smallest because of the type of food they consume. The elephant population in Etosha has grown by 9,615% (now 2,500) since 1954 due to the boreholes drilled along the 19th latitude, primarily to draw elephants into the parks from the farms.

Further along the road we saw a honey badger playing cat and mouse with a jackal. The importance of this was it’s very, very rare to see a honey badger. It wasn’t impressive but looked like a rat being chased by a dog. But I did the, “ooohhhh aaahhh” at the appropriate time.

We could never get sick on this tour as 90% of the food is cooked for us 3 times a day.We have to wash our hands before every meal with soap, then Dettol, then rinse. The same goes for all the cooking eating utensils before it’s flapped. The Dettol drys your hands out but the other tour companies who aren’t so strict on hygiene have people getting sick. I wouldn’t have expected all our bodies to be so dry. The skin all over our bodies is cracking and it stings. Namibia is the driest of all African countries with next to no humidity whatsoever. All water, although perfectly safe to drink or shower in, has a slight salty taste, even bottled water.

Day Two: as per usual we have the tent packed down by 6am, breakfast is at 630am, and we are in the truck and on the road by 7:15am sharp. Today we are going further into Etosha N.P. Both nights are spent at camp grounds in the park. The landscape is changing even more so, with the salt pans now easily visible. Eland antelope and Oryx antelope roam for salt, as all animals like the taste. Eland are the biggest of the antelope family, growing up to 1.8 metres. In the last blog I said Eland were chewy animals, that was actually the Kudo antelope. The Eland was a spectacular meat, hands down much tastier than cow. I’m told the Oryx is the best but we’ll have to wait until Swakopmund to try it. We had giraffe the other day as it was made into a biltong. It tasted like day old lamb chops.
The black faced impala antelope was nearly extinct in the 70s. Now Etosha is the only place in the world they can be found. We have seen thousands of normal and black faced impala. When two Impala antelope have a fight, occasionally they lock horns. If this happens they cannot unlock them then they’re an easy lion’s supper.

There are plenty of man made water holes at Etosha which makes spotting easier. Today’s mission is to find a male lion, rhino, cheetah, leopard and meerkat as we haven’t seen them, and a warthog as Dave likes watching them and likes the taste. All we seem to spot are giraffes, elephants and zebras by the dazzle. The black stripes on a zebra absorb the heat while the white reflects. Each zebra’s stripes are different, like finger prints, so the first thing a baby zebra does is remember the mother’s stripes. There are 8 types of zebra, the ones we saw on day two had brown on their coats.

We had been driving for 2 hours without seeing much, then a car stopped us and advised us lions are only few kilometres back. There sure were lions, only 10 metres from our truck was a zebra carcass, maybe 12 hours dead with only the head and ribs remaining. 2 male lions, 1 female and two 4 month old cubs peacefully lay after their breakfast feast was finished. About 30 metres away lay 6 more females sleeping under a tree.

I understand why wilderbeast are a part of the Ugly 5, but I do feel sorry for the poor animal. Not only are they unfortunate looking, once a baby is born it has 7 mins to start walking and within 1 hour they have to run as fast as they possibly can to escape from their predators.

At our ‘safe toilet spot’ (no sporadic squatting in this territory) we followed Richard and Liz on their GeoCache treasure hunt. In the fork of a tree we found the little canister and code hidden. That was their 1800th one and our 1st. I don’t think I have the patience or stickability to keep up with this treasure hunt.

After spotting a leopard, which is next to impossible as they are sooooo hard to find, we learnt what dictates the Big 5. It’s because of how aggressive these 5 are. Of the big 5, elephant, black rhino, water buffalo, leopard and lion, the rhino is the most aggressive and dangerous. We later saw our second leopard of the day. We were searching for this flipping leopard for about an hour in some white rocks under beautiful green trees. Seriously the hardest animal on earth to spot, it’s very camouflaged. On and off this frustrating animal was hiding, then finally we found the perfect shot and BOTH OUR CAMERA BATTERIES DIED! The big cat family sleep for about 20 hours per day and eat for the remainder so if you’re not th
ere for the 4, luck to you finding them. I have no patience for this animal finding stuff, which is probably why I like elephants. They eat most of the day, they’re hard to miss and make for perfect photo opportunities. Wham, bam thank you mam!

Further along we go, there becomes less and less trees, then none whatsoever, we then reach Etosha Pan – The White Place. In the salt pan you can stand anywhere and for 360 degree there is nothing but white. The horizon isn’t far and it looks like glittering water, and there is even what looks to be a water inlet. It’s in fact not at all, it’s a mirage. A whirly whirly (mini tornado) of white salt is seen in the distance.

Day two, evening: The only thing we haven’t seen yet on these game drives, is a real must. The black rhino. Etosha has the single largest population of this nearly extinct animal. The actual count here is kept a secret so that this fact and the population of rhinos it defines is never threatened. There’s been a 3000% increase in poaching in the last 5 years as they fetch $60,000 per horn. It’s sold as Chinese medicine yet there is no proof of medicinal value. In some parts of Africa, people guard the rhinos 24/7 to protect them from poachers. 30 poachers have been shot dead this year alone. If something isn’t drastically done within 5years, they will be extinct.
After dinner we got out the sleeping bags, 5 Marino base layers, gloves and a woolly hat for me and we waited and waited and waited for these rhinos to appear at the well lit waterhole on the outer part of the campsite. Straight from the bottle we all shared swigs of ‘saint Julia’ shiraz and some ‘monkey gland flavoured chips’ and still nothing apart from 6 giraffes, zebras and antelope. 10 years ago someone fell asleep snoring at the waterhole and got killed by a lion so we were under strict instructions not to fall asleep – my limit was 10:30pm before the lids got heavy. Animal spotting is luck of the draw. The night before 11 were there and at 3am that night I heard someone saying they saw one. It wasn’t a total waste of time though as in the depth of the darkness, in complete silence comes the almighty roar and grunting of a lion. That in itself was worth staying up late for!

Our leader shoots out these animal facts as we see them so I managed to capture them and write them into our blog over the two days on the road. You wouldn’t think its possible to not even look up when hundreds of zebra dazzles pass us by or not whip the camera out when 10 giraffe towers munch on trees, but after spending nearly 20 hours over two days in the truck game driving we can safely say that we’re ready for a change of scenery. For someone who doesn’t have an animal bone in my body, I have throughly enjoyed the African wildlife.

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