After sorting out our car rental (a 4x4 extended cab Nissan truck), we were off on our way up north to Etosha National Park. I’ve never driven a truck before, but it felt fitting to have one for a safari vacation. Plus, the 4 wheel drive is kind of a must in Namibia (more on that later). It only took us about 5 hours to reach Etosha, on paved roads. We were staying at a lodge about 10km outside of the park entrance, as the park camps were all filled when I was making the reservations. The lodge was really beautiful though – it had a big main lodge situated on top of a hill with great views of the surrounding bushland, with a bar and indoor and outoor dining areas, and then each guest had their own private chalet-type room. The lady who checked us in said it was a 20 minute walk from our room to the main lodge, so after getting situated, we drove up in order to make it in time to watch the sunset…only to discover we were epitomizing the image of lazy American (and lazy Swedish?) tourists, as it would have taken about 3.5 minutes for us to walk to the main lodge, haha. Anyway, we at least had time to enjoy our sundowners (=cocktail had while watching the sunset) before having dinner. It was incredibly warm and felt great to enjoy the dinner outside on the deck. I think we hit Namibia at a great time, as there were very few mosquitos to deal with. Yup, it was just us…and tons of German tourists. I knew that Namibia was a former German colony, but as they hadn’t been controlled by the Germans since after WWI ended, I thought there wouldn’t be that big of a German influence there. I thought wrong. Apparently when Germans go to Africa, they go to Namibia. Literally everyone besides us was German. It was nice to be in the minority for once, and I must admit I took comfort in realizing that Germans can be fat, ignorant, annoying tourists just as well as Americans can! :)
Wednesday morning we got up extremely early in order to catch breakfast at 6am and hop on a safari truck at 6:30 am. Though morning is not Mikael’s forte, I guess the realization that animal viewing is much better during the cooler hours of the day was enough motivation to get him going, haha. We were very fortunate in that, since we had signed up late for a lodge-led safari, they had to organize an extra vehicle for us. This time the early birds didn’t get the worms, since we had our own vehicle and guide for just the two of us, while everyone else was packed into buses or trucks carrying more like 10 people. The vehicles are made so the driver is in the truck cab, and then the passengers ride in open bench seating in the back, with a cover on top to provide shade. I’m so glad we signed up for a guide-led safari, as we would have had no idea where to go otherwise. Rodney (our guide) had a radio and was not only able to keep up to date on where the day’s best sightings were, but he of course knew where the large pride of lions slept, what time the elephants bathed in which water hole, etc.
I had such a great time in Etosha. It was so different from Kruger (South Africa’s large game park and the only other place I’ve ever been on a safari). While Kruger consists of mostly “bush,” and does possess large rivers (or at least the parts I saw) and other water sources, Etosha is quite desertous and has a lot of empty, flat land with little tree vegetation and no major water source (at least not this time of year, towards the end of the dry season). In fact, “Etosha” means “great white place,” referring to the extensive salt pan that covers much of the park. There are also some bush areas, but a lot of the land looks more like savannah, with only grass. The nice thing about the dryness is that it means the animals are forced to congregate at waterholes, providing for some nice all-in-one game viewing. Some people might find it boring, but I found the vast emptiness to be quite beautiful, and I thought it provided a great backdrop for viewing African wildlife.
So yeah, back to the wildlife. Rodney was able to show us quite a bit on Wednesday, as we stayed out with him for 12 hours straight. In the early morning we found a large pride of lions to watch, which was really great because I had never seen lions before. They were all lazing about, so we just sat and watched until they got hot and got up and left (at which point they are very inactive for the rest of the day and mostly just sleep). We saw 3 males and 3 females and 3 cubs, all quite cute. It was really amazing to watch them. One of them was sleeping on its back with its bloody paws in the air, just like Zoё (my dog at home, for those of you who don’t know), minus the bloody paw part. When the males woke up they would stretch, yawn, roar, etc. Seeing them in their natural habitat is so much better than zoos. They are quite beautiful, with those piercing light brown eyes and incredible muscles, and it’s interesting to watch them disappear into the savannah grassland – haha, makes me realize I would never want to go wandering aimlessly about lion country!
After the lion viewing, we saw tons of gemsbok, springbok, zebra, wildebeest, kudu, giraffe, ostrich, etc. at various water holes. Of course you’re not allowed out of your car except within the rest camps which are surrounded by electric fences, but one of the rest camps has stadium seating set up for viewing a waterhole right outside the camp edge, and I must say, it’s kind of a weird feeling to just be hanging out and eating lunch and watching all these animals like you’re at a sporting event. They really are quite entertaining, though. After lunch we headed to another waterhole where there was a large group of elephants hanging out and bathing. Some of the water holes are fed by water that runs off the salt pan (or something like that; I didn’t quite catch all the details), so the elephants who bathe in those waterholes turn white. I know that sounds strange, but I’m serious! It was the craziest thing. They looked totally unreal, like statues. It was really fun to watch them messing around in the water. With our afternoon drive, we also managed to find an endangered black rhino, which was nice to see. It was really, really hot in the afternoon (mid 90s) and the animals clearly all just wanted to hang out in the shade. It was quite common to see a group of 20 sprinbok all crowded under the shade of the one lone tree in the area. We saw a male ostrich with 7 little babies standing in his shadow, and it was really cute to watch them scurry to stay in his shade with every step he took. On the way out of the park, we noticed a jackal eating a springbok by the side of the road, surrounded by a pack of about 20 vultures who did not look happy about having to wait their turn. Rodney said it must have been a cheetah kill, since they are the only animals who don’t finish all their meal (lions mostly eat it all, leopards drag the rest into a tree, cheetah apparently only eat fresh meat and can only eat a relatively small portion and then have to leave the rest – or sometimes get chased off their own kill, which hardly seems fair, especially since we heard it often takes them 15-20 minutes simply to catch their breath after the kill before they can start eating). Too bad we missed the cheetah by about 15 minutes, according to Rodney. Oh well…next time! Rodney was a great guide and I’m very thankful we had him. According to him, Americans and Swedes make up approximately 0.2% of who he takes out on safaris (with over 99% being German), so hopefully we provided him some novel entertainment. He at least liked talking about the Swedish soccer team!
After a very full day of safari-ing, we once again indulged in sundowners and a nice outdoor dinner. Thursday morning we got up really early again, but this time we drove ourselves around the park, since we now had a much better idea of which water holes to visit. (Rodney said unfortunately a lot of tourists drive around all day without seeing anything, because if you just look at the water holes on the map, you don’t know which ones are seasonal, or long since dry, or simply never attract many animals.) Oddly enough (and this would probably only happen with my luck), in the middle of the dry season and amidst the Namibian desert, it was cloudy and even rained a bit on Thursday. I was initially disappointed, but in the end I think it made the game viewing better since the animals were more active without the strong sun out. We went back to the area where we had seen the lions and this time were able to view a male who decided to get up and cross the road right by all the cars. It was really amazing to see. Sadly, however, it was pretty hard to get pictures, as there was a mad rush of cars trying to turn this way and that on a narrow little road to get better views, but that’s ok. After the lion viewing, we headed towards another water hole and on the way Mikael spotted a hyena crossing the road. It was really cool to see the hyena up close, especially since they are usually harder to see and we were the first ones to see it. We then stumbled across a set of female lions crossing the road…though once again the car congestion made picture taking a bit hard. One last stop at the main camp water hole to see more elephants (this time they were the regular grey color, since this group didn’t bathe in the white-mud water), and we had to pry ourselves away from the park in order to get on the road and to our next destination.
Without even thinking about it, I apparently chose the perfect vacation destination for Mikael, the off-roading enthusiast. A few main highways in Namibia are paved, but most other roads are not. And you really have to plan where you’re going to get gas, since the country is so empty. After leaving Etosha, our drive towards the Skeleton Coast was mostly on gravel roads. You can drive for almost an hour without running into another car or seeing a town…though there are plenty of goats, baboons, termite mounds, and warthogs along the road to keep you occupied. I’ve said it before (based on a trip 3 years ago through southern Namibia) and I’ll say it again: Namibia makes eastern Montana look like a sprawling metropolis, haha. The endless stream of blown tires left on the roadside made me really glad our rental truck came equipped with two real spares, despite me initially questioning the necessity of the rental car guy taking 20 minutes to explain how to get to each tire and how to change them. For some weird reason, Namibians seem to like to make little shrines for their destroyed tires, perhaps to commemorate the noble life of a tire that was ever so brave as to give it a go on the desolate, rocky roads of Namibia. Yes, it was very strange, but nearly every dead tire we passed was not just abandoned on the side of the road, but propped up with little rock patterns surrounding it, sometimes with empty coke or beer bottles placed on top. The scenery was really beautiful as we drove through savannah and bush, then through a more mountainous region, and then met up with the Namib Desert as we eventually hit the coast. The Skeleton Coast is the very remote and desertous region that makes up Namibia’s northwestern Atlantic coastline. Its name comes from the fact that so many ships have wrecked along the coast over the past centuries. (I read that it’s a ship graveyard due to the combination of a rocky coastline, strong winds, and daily morning fog.) We stayed at a lodge called Cape Cross, which is about an hour north of the last town along the coast. The lodge is right on the beach and of course offered great sunset views, once again.
Friday we spent the day just exploring the Skeleton coast on our own. We set off driving North, towards the Skeleton Coast National Park entrance. Along the way we did some off roading in the sand along the beach in order to visit old remains of shipwrecks. Yeah, you’ll be driving along and then a road sign will pop up and say “Shipwreck” with an arrow pointing towards the ocean, at which point you veer off the main road and try to follow tracks in the sand until you get to the beach and can then search for the wreck. Needless to say, this type of tourism wouldn’t really fly in the U.S., but we had a good time. We were also extremely grateful for our 4 wheel drive. Eventually we reached the park entrance, where we had to fill out paperwork about exactly how far we were going and when we would be back before the guard opened the gates for us. Realizing they were that serious about making sure they could find you if you didn’t come back out, in combination with the gates having skulls and crossbones on them, it was a bit intimidating to enter the park. Seriously, NOTHING is out there. I loved it though. It felt like we had the whole park to ourselves (we didn’t see anyone else while we were there). We didn’t even drive that far into the park (our trip length was dictated by our gas tank) and were only there for a little over an hour, but the emptiness was mind blowing and quite beautiful. We stopped to view one shipwreck and noticed lots of dog-like tracks along the beach, which we later found out belonged to the brown hyena. Talk about being in a place where there would be no one to hear you scream, haha! (Don’t worry mom, we were quite close to the car, and believe me when I say we would have seen something coming from miles away; plus brown hyena are smaller, and hyenas mostly just eat things that are already dead). After leaving the park, we stopped to visit the seal colony at Cape Cross (very close to our lodge). There must be some incredible fishing out there because Cape Cross is host to a seal colony of ~250,000. And no, that’s not a typo. We didn’t catch the colony at the peak time of year though, so there were probably “only” like 70,000 seals. It was cute to see them, especially the babies, but I must admit they smelled really bad.
Another spectacular sunset later, and it was Saturday morning and time for us to drive back to Windhoek. Along the way we stopped in Swakopmund, a very touristy port town. It was weird to be back in the tourist world after getting to experience the other side of Namibia and it made me really glad we had spent our vacation doing more untraditional exploring. All in all it was a really great trip!
View of the bushland surrounding our lodge just outside of Etosha National Park
Sunset #1, at the lodge in Etosha
Such a rare experience for me to catch sunrise, haha!
Trees really stand out in certain areas of Etosha (the black is because some of the grasslands had recently burned)
Animals gather at a waterhole in the distance as the Etosha salt pan stretches on behind them
Lion wandering about (unfortunately he looks very small in this format!)
The empty savannah
The zebra don't have the best camouflage...but apparently their stripes are not to make them blend into their surroundings but instead to make them blend in with one another, thus confusing predators on the chase
Waterhole gathering (unfortunately it's hard to see, but there are gemsbok, springbok, zebra, and kudu all drinking and being merry together)
Ostrich father provides shade for his kids
Springbok have to get their shade elsewhere
The "white" elephants - don't they look fake?
Whoops I forget what those things behind the zebra are called - too many antelope-type-things to keep track of!
Gemsbok/oryx (also pretty tasty)
I love the kudu antlers...and incidentally kudu taste pretty good too :)
Black rhino
Springbok kill - it's hard to tell but there's a jackal in the center who apparently has authority over the vultures to eat first
Sunset Day 2 (can you see a theme here?)
Haha, another tiny lion dot! Luckily we had binoculars, so it felt like we were face to face with them. They have indescribably beautiful, piercing brown eyes.
A lone giraffe in the distance...their height makes it sort of hard for them to blend into the grasslands!
More zebra
And a baby!
On the edge of the vast Etosha pan
Hyena on the prowl
Showing her teeth
Bath time!
Wildebeest
The tree that giraffe is eating is actually covered in 2 inch long thorns - they must have tough mouths!
Driving through Namibia to get to the coast
A very weird cactus
Finally, we reach the Skeleton Coast
Sunset #3, as seen from our room
Haha, that dot in the center is our car. Talk about being in the middle of nowhere!
Shipwreck remains
The colored sand made for interesting patterns along the beach
I really can't convey how empty the Skeleton Coast is, but I find the desert scenery to be quite beautiful
Not a very inviting park entrance!
This park road isn't exactly like the paved highways of the national parks in the U.S.
The Skeleton Coast is so desolate and univiting...especially when the only sign of human life is shipwreck remains!
Cape Cross seal colony
Baby seal feeding
Sunset #4
A more recent wreck (from far away it looks like a normal boat but once you get closer you realize it's old and rusty and falling apart - it's just weird that no one ever took it out of the water)
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