August 14-18: Etosha National Park

We left the Kunene River and the border post town of Ruacana and headed back south a few hundred kilometers to the western entrance to Etosha National Park.

Our journey through Etosha involved a west-to-east route through the Park, entering through the western gate and exiting through the eastern Gate, with 3 nights at campgrounds inside the Park and 1 night at a campsite in the Onguma Conservancy on the eastern side of the Park.

Etosha NP is the crown jewl of the Namibian Park system, and really the only Park in Namibia with the full complement of wildlife species, including all the big ones. The Park is one of the largest national parks in Africa, encompassing 8,600 square miles – that’s pretty big! It started as a game reserve like most Parks in Africa, with a focus on supplying big game for the white hunters, proclaimed in 1907 by the governor of German South West Africa, which you may recall was ruling Namibia before the South Africans took it over at the start of World War 1. At the time of its establishment, the game reserve was several times larger than the current Park and extended west all the way to the Atlantic ocean and north all the way to the Angola border. Subsequently, the South African government declared it a national park in 1967 and over time was progressively reduced in size to its current extent, primarily to honor the land rights of the native people in the region. 

The Park is named after the enormous Etosha pan, which is almost entirely within the park and encompasses an area of 1,840 sq mi and constituting 23% of the total area of the Park. You may recall that these pans form in low-lying areas that flood during the rainy season and subsequently dry out, and in the process concentrate salts on the surface, often producing a white salty crust and generally preventing vegetation growth due to the high salinity. Etosha pan has vast expanses of salty clay soil interspersed with salt-loving grassland. Surprisingly, you can find lots of springbok out on these salt pans, along with zebra and wildebeest in the grassy areas. Here’s a few pics of the pan and fringing sweet lime-loving grasslands on the fringe of the Pan:

The 77% of the Park that is NOT the Pan is very flat, with only a few hills in the far west of the Park and a couple of isolated hills (or koppies) in the south, and mostly covered with short mopane woodland interspersed with shrubby acacia thornveld – not the stuff you want to do a walkabout in. Truth be told, much of the Park is rather monotonous landscape with very few animals to see in most of it; we probably spent 90% of our time driving through homogenous vegetation without seeing anything or much. But then there are hotspots where the animal life is concentrated and in large numbers and it makes all the driving worth it. Here’s a few shots of the grassy/shrubby openings in the otherwise monotonous mopane woodland (which you have seen enough of):

The Park is home to all the classic savannah species of southern Africa, but is most noteworthy for its population of the endangered black rhino. Unfortanately, despite the Park’s anti-poaching efforts, as recently as 2022, 46 were killed inside the Park. The Park is simply too big to effectively patrol and the Park’s boundary fence is too easily thwarted by the poachers. At this rate of poaching, I’m not sure how long the Park will have black rhinos.

Our first night was spent at the Olifantrus camp in the western section of the Park. While the campground was unexpectedly rather devoid of any redeeming character or views of the surrounding landscape, it did have a waterhole just outside the campground with an elevated blind or hide that offered up close and personal observations of elephants and other creatures. Here’s what happens to the 1/2 inch think plexiglass hide viewing window at ground level when an elephant head bangs it, probably trying to take out one of the many annoying French or German tourists:

Our drive eastward through the western section of the Park, after leaving Olifantrus, was mostly rather uneventful except for a couple of very special wildlife encounters: one with a pair of bat-eared foxes on the road in front of us and another with a honey badger digging out ground squirrels and eating them, but you’ll have to watch the composite video to see these observations as I was too busy tring to video to take pictures.

Our next campsite was called Okaukuejo, located in the central portion of the Park and serving as the administrative headquarters for the Park and overall hub for all tourist activity. This was a campsite from Hell, truly! 50 or more sites crowded together without any separation, partitions or shade to speak of, and crowded, dirty, shared ablutions. Here’s a picture of our campsite way before it got crowded later in the day:

This was one of my least favorite campsites in all of my African travels, in part because of the aweful campsite but also because of the hundreds of annoying European tourists, or to be more specific, French and German tourists. Do you sense a bit of tourist bias on my part? If so, you are right on, as we have encountered lots of rather discourteous French and German tourists on our wildlife drives and at the waterholes. The only highlight of this portion of the trip and our stay at this campsite was the waterhole, which they light up at night for viewing the nocturnal creatures. We were fortunate to watch a black rhino come to the waterhall after dark, despite the loud Frogs and Germans chattting away when the “Silence Please” signs are all over the place at the waterhold viewing area. Here’s a few shots of the waterhold at sunset and the endangered black rhino, and there is a little video footage as well:

Our third night was spent at the Halali campite in the east-central section of the Park. Another campsite NOT to recommend for the same reasons as before, but somewhat more tolerable than the previous one. More importantly, there was a rather nice waterhole with night lighting and we managed to watch two black rhinos along with several spotted hyenas at this hole. See the composite video for some footage.

Our last night was spent just outside the eastern boundary of the Park in the adjoining Onguma Conservancy. Fortunately, we had a delightful campsite with all the trimmings, as shown here:

Overall, we saw lots of critters during our visit to Etosha, but also spent a lot of time driving too, and on some pretty crappy corrogated roads which produced not just a few cuss words out of my mouth, much to Nancy’s irritation. Not much else to say abou the Park, so I will end this post with: 1) a link to the composite video that has some cool footage of the honey badger along with some night footage of the black rhinos and lots of miscellaneous stuff, 2) a few “From the Wildside” pics, and 3) a gallery of some highlight wildlife photos that didn’t make it into the story above.

Compsite Etosha National Park video (37 min)

From the Wildside:

Photo Gallery:

New Species:

• Violet woodhoopoe