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The third of the blog posts from my trip to Namibia/Botswana. The second blog post ended with the last evening at the Brandberg White Lady Lodge in Namibia’s Damaraland, now continuing north to the Etosha National Park, and later the Caprivi Strip.
Saturday, MAY 26th
I checked out of the Brandberg White Lady Lodge and drove towards Etosha via Outjo. Before doing so however, I needed to get out the car’s compressor kit to re-inflate the back right tire.
It had lost air for a couple of days. However, it didn’t fully seem punctured, as re-inflating it with the air compressor would last for another full day.
Outjo is the last city before the gates of Etosha National Park. With still a couple of hundred kilometers to go until I reached my campsite, I refueled the car there.
Etosha National Park is the best place in Namibia to see wildlife. It is a huge national park, covering in total 22,270 square kilometers (~8,600 square miles). The center of the park is the Etosha pan, a flat salt pan that is completely dry during the winter dry season, covering 4,760 square kilometers (~1,840 square miles). Everyone, literally everyone traveling to Namibia, whether self-driving, or traveling as part of a guided tour, will come here. There are five camps inside of the park, and several dozen scattered around the fringes of the national park, outside its gates.
What’s really special about Etosha, is that it is so densely populated with wildlife, that even as an amateur you will very easily find several species on your own. There are hundreds of kilometers of gravel trails south of the Etosha Pan, which is where most of the visitors spend their time. There are over 40 waterholes throughout Etosha, and during dry season, this is where the animals congregate. During rainy season, the animals might spread out more. I had specifically planned my trip during the dry, winter season for this reason. It’s as easy as driving up to a waterhole, turning off the car’s engine to be more silent, and just waiting 10-15 minutes for the animals to arrive, if there isn’t already a large group of them there.
At the end of the asphalted highway from Outjo lies Okaukuejo, the headquarters of the national park. It is the main camp within Etosha, and is also where you have to pay your park fees. The staff at the gate will note down your information and hand you a bill. You must settle it in Okaukuejo, if you arrive from the south. Before entering the camp itself, I saw literally hundreds of zebras gathered around the Okaukuejo waterhole, which is just to the south of the camp.
I had lunch in Okaukuejo, and walked over to its waterhole viewing area on foot.
Then I drove onwards, zigzagging past several of the waterholes between Okaukuejo and Halali. The latter being the camp I had booked for the first two out of three nights in Etosha. I saw mostly antelope species in the couple of hours of driving between Okaukuejo and Halali. Mainly springbok and black-faced impalas, including a pair of males fighting in the road right in front of me and another car.
At the Halali Camp, I was going to be camping for two nights. I booked onto a guided game drive that same night, and “checked in”. There are no assigned campsites, so you just drive over to whichever spot is vacant and set up. Ablutions facilities are shared, so there’s no keys either. Thus, checking in isn’t much more than a “hey, I’m here” and writing your name in a guest book.
After setting up the tent, I realized that I needed to pump more air in the back right tire. It had deflated a lot since the morning. I had gotten the compressor out and hooked it up to the car’s battery. I then walked back to connect it to the tire, at which point I realized it would be worthless. The unmistakable whistle-sound of air leaking out of the tire made it clear it was indeed punctured. Fortunately I was prepared for this situation. I had two spare tires with me, AND I know how to change a tire too.
I’ve heard unbelieveable stories of people self-driving in Africa with no knowledge of how to change a tire. I got the spare off the back door just the fine with the spanner, then I got out the jack, lifted up the car, and tried to get the wheel off. All six bolts were completely stuck. No luck. Some of the adjacent campers actually asked if I needed help. I did indeed need help, but I figured the campsite’s petrol station was a much better bet, so I politely declined. Because I had booked the game drive, I needed to be at the reception by 7 PM, and have dinner beforehand. I was running out of time to change the tire that evening regardless. It wasn’t a big issue, I was already set up in a camping spot so that I could sleep for the night.
On the night game drive in the dark, we saw fewer animals than you would in the daytime. The guides had special lights that they could shine over the fields and into the bushes, without hurting animals. There were a few nocturnal species that were harder to spot during the daylight. At one point our guides stopped the car, convinced they had seen a pair of lions about 200m (600ft) off the road in some thick bushes. Sure enough, they were right. I should mention that the lions had apparently been hanging out around this same spot during the day as well. The guides were aware of their approximate location. Still, I would have had zero chance of spotting them. I didn’t even see them myself before we drove off-road to get a much closer look.
It was a lion and lioness eating part of an antelope they had hunted down. Any self-drivers had to return to camp by sunset. A guided game drive was the only opportunity to search for wildlife at night, and to see a sight like this. Once we returned to camp around 10 PM, I went straight to bed, as I figured I needed to allow extra time in the morning to have my tire fixed.
Sunday, May 27th
I woke up to a very flat right rear tire.
Before doing anything about the tire, I walked over to the campsite restaurant to have some breakfast. Then I inflated the tire enough to roll over to the other side of the campsite, where the petrol station was located. The workers there were not only able to loosen the wheel bolts and change the tire. They were even able to fix the broken tire as well.
It turned out a nail had lodged itself into the tire and was causing the air to leak out of it slowly but steady.
The gas station attendants pulled the nail out of the tire and patched it up. This meant I could still use it as a second spare. I tipped them quite well, they had definitely earned it.
Having had the car taken care of, I did a lot of self-driving to waterholes around Halali Camp before returning for lunch. There were plenty of antelope as always, and a few ostriches.
In the afternoon I decided on joining another guided game drive, which turned out to be a good decision. We saw a large flock of roughly 20 or so elephants, including a couple of little ones.
We spent almost half an hour just watching them grazing and moving about. There were also plenty of giraffes.
When we returned to camp I drove back to the same camping spot that I had used the night before. In order to “reserve” it, I had left one of the camping chairs behind. When I arrived the spot was vacant, but the chair was nowhere to be found. I drove back to the reception and inquired about it, and they radioed the cleaning crew. The person on the other end knew exactly which chair the receptionist was talking about. I drove back to the same campsite, set up the tent, and then went to the Halali waterhole to have a look at the sunset. An added bonus was that a large flock of elephants, likely the same group from the game drive, had migrated to the waterhole.
It seemed that there were more than one group. There were a few grunts and fights for room among the elephants. When I walked back to the campsite, the chair had been returned. After dinner, as it had turned dark, I actually did the 10-minute walk back to the waterhole. I wanted to see if there was something else going on at night. There were some different animals, but just one elephant left, so much quieter than before.
Monday, May 28th
I checked out of the Halali Camp, and self-drove to almost every waterhole between there and Namutoni Camp, in the eastern corner of Etosha National Park. I spotted plenty of zebras, springboks and a few elephants. In between all the waterholes was a trip out to a great look-out spot over the Etosha pan.
It is one humongous saline pan that’s flat as far as the eye can see. During rainy season, this place is flooded and you might even see flamingos here! That is almost unbelievable.
While I was at one of the waterholes, I did what I usually had done up until that point. I simply idled the engine while stopping for photos. An elephant walked past my car and kept walking, and this seemed to irritate some of the other travelers there.
As I passed one of the other cars, the driver looked me dead in the eyes and shook his head at me. I rolled down the window to ask what was wrong. I essentially got yelled at for keeping the engine running and “scaring the animals away”. Fair point, I guess I’ll just say I’m learning by doing, as this is my first real safari trip.
After checking in at the Namutoni Camp, I walked over to the campsite restaurant for lunch. The Namutoni Camp is actually based around an old German colonial fortress. You can enter the building during daytime and have a walk around. Since I was in Africa for the wildlife, I decided on hitting the road to look for animals in the wilderness instead. Namutoni also offered guided game drives in the morning, afternoon and evening like at Halali. It was too late to sign onto the afternoon drive. I did ask at the reception about the evening drive before passing through the camp gates on my way out.
My self-drive exploration of Etosha continued north of Namutoni. Over the course of four hours, I reached all waterholes in the northeast of the park, all the way up to the northern King Nehale Gate to the park. The animals that you see in this area were a slightly different mix than the rest of Etosha. Sure, there’s the ubiquitous springbok, zebras and the occasional giraffe. But there were also more ostriches than anywhere else, and my first sighting of warthogs!
They were frolicking in the mud next to a small pipe running underneath the gravel road. I’m not entirely sure why there was a pipe under the road. Most likely it would have to do with the water during the rainy season, as this was just on the fringe of the salt pan. I almost didn’t see the warthogs at first, but there were two of them with one sticking its head out of the pipe. I was there by myself for almost 10 minutes just watching them play around, before some other cars showed up. Closer to the northern national park gate, I also saw a very large group of oryx antelope.
They were crossing from one field to another and created quite a road block, stopping to look at me multiple times while crossing the road. That was followed up by a large flock of elephants taking a mud bath to protect their skin.
When I returned to Namutoni at 6pm, about 20 minutes before the camp’s gates would close at sunset, I found out no one else had booked the evening game drive. It was not going to take place. Fortunately I had booked a luxury chalet, so I did not have to set up the tent on my car this time.
After having had dinner, and with the fortress being closed, the only source of entertainment was the camp’s waterhole. This waterhole was quite a disappointment. Not only was the waterhole itself several hundred meters away from the seating area, there was nothing to see. That wasn’t too bad though, as it meant I could get to bed early, ahead of the longest day of driving of the entire three weeks.
Tuesday, May 29th
Had breakfast at the camp’s restaurant before checking out of Namutoni. As I drove towards the camp’s gate, I tried to get fuel at the camp’s fuel station. However, the diesel pump didn’t function. It’s generally a very good idea to refuel whenever you see a gas station in Africa. For one, you never know when you will see one again. The next one you come across might not have fuel or a working pump, as in this case. Ahead of me was an almost 700 km (~425 miles) trip, with 7 hours of driving, not counting stops. I was going towards the Caprivi Strip, a narrow strip of land belonging to Namibia, wedged in between Angola and Zambia to the north, and Botswana to the south.
It was far from an emergency with the fuel however. There were plenty of large cities with multiple petrol stations along the route. Got fuel in Tsumeb, about an hour southeast of Namutoni. About another hour later I made a stop near Grootfontein at a farm, known for the Hoba Meteorite. It is the largest intact meteorite discovered on Planet Earth. It is not necessarily the largest that has struck earth, but it is the largest one that remains. The meteorite is however not as impressive as it sounds. It was discovered in 1920, weighs around 54,000 kg (~120,000 pounds), and is roughly 2×2 meters (6×6 feet) large.
I drove on towards Rundu along the B8 highway, where I stopped for lunch and fuel. By now it already felt like a long drive, but almost all of it was on paved highways. Since this was a relatively remote area with long distances, I always very strictly obeyed the speed limits (*wink wink*). In Namibia, speed cameras are very few and far in between, and there’s no effort to hide them. They are solar powered, and the solar cells are on top of a tall pole. The whole thing is painted bright yellow. Seriously, you can see them from a mile away, giving you plenty of time to slow down before you reach the “speed trap”.
Along the way, the fuel gauge finally moved! Fuel attendants in Rundu told me the car probably has a double-tank. I was able to confirm this later during the trip. Up until that point, I had always assumed the fuel gauge was broken.
I decided on eating lunch at the highway gas station instead of going into downtown Rundu. It was a terrible decision. The sandwich was soggy, and the hot dog that I bought along with it was horrible. I also haven’t ever had french fries that were that bad ever. It was however definitely also the cheapest meal I had in Africa.
Continued towards Ngepi Camp which would be my stop for the night. I had booked a night here, on the banks of the Kavango River in Namibia’s Caprivi Strip. The idea was to break up the journey between Etosha National Park and Muchenje, Botswana. It would have been much, much too long to do in one day with a border crossing as well. Fortunately I got to Ngepi early enough to enjoy more than just a meal and a place to sleep. I joined one of their sunset mokoro trips.
Mokoros are dugout canoes that were traditionally used by the indigenous people around the rivers in the Caprivi Strip and particularly further downstream in the Okavango Delta. It’s an excellent opportunity to get out on the river and see other types of animals than you normally find on land. There were numerous birds, but the highlight of the trip were a dozen hippos.
They regularly surfaced to breathe, as they can’t breathe underwater. Hippos can however hold their breath for a couple of minutes. Some of them even exhaled a stream of water as a tactic for trying to keep us at distance. Every now and then one of the hippos even yawned, with their jaws wide open.
It was fantastic to see. We were always at a safe distance. The guides were prepared incase any of the hippos came closer, but they stayed tightly together.
After about 15 minutes of watching them from the water, an hour-and-a-half into the trip, we went over to the nearest riverbank to take a break on land.
Mokoros are driven by a poler, who manually propels the canoe forward, and it is quite tiring for them. The way that you are seated as a passenger is also not comfortable for the legs over a long period of time. You’re grateful for the opportunity to stretch the legs too.
Just prior to sunset we returned to camp. It was then time for me to set up the tent on the car. I was camping in a nice spot just a few meters from the river.
That’s pretty much as close as you get. Returning to camp also gave me a good opportunity to look around the property. I was positively surprised with the atmosphere there. Everywhere you looked were humorous signs regarding camp facilities or rules.
Dinner was served on a deck overlooking the river, unfortunately it was too dark to take a decent picture. I went to bed in the tent to the sounds of chirping birds and hippos splashing around in the river.