The Etosha National Park is very well known and everybody goes there. As we are travelling during high season, we had booked all the camps we wanted to stay at already months ago.
We entered the park from the east, starting at Namutoni, afterwards we camped one night at Halali, Okaukuejo and finally Olifantsrus, before we left the park in the west.
Every camp has a waterhole, which is lighted at night. We had great sightings at Halali, where we could watch 5 lionesses coming for a drink early in the morning. In the evening we could watch rhinos, one female with a calf, and jackals.
That we spotted the cheetah was great luck. Other tourists had informed us, that there is a cheetah lying under a tree just after the “lake”. As we couldn’t figure out which tree, after which lake, we asked every passing car, and one of them could give us a more accurate description of where to find it. It was just visible from the track. We took the pictures with the 500mm lens from our “bedroom” window.
The first day we stopped for every Springbok, every bird, every animal we could spot. After we came across the thousandth Springbok or Zebra, we were quite saturated, looking for the animals we hadn’t spotted yet.
We had to be at the campsite at sunset as the gate will be closed between sunset and sunrise and you are not allowed to be outside the enclosed campsites. Just before we got to the gate, a group of elephants walked into the dusk, giving us an incredible last sighting on our first day in Etosha.
We were fascinated by the number of animals we had spotted the first two days already. They are accustomed to the cars and you are able to watch them from nearby. Even with the campsites fully booked, it didn’t feel crowded, but of course there are other cars around, especially at the waterholes.
More about Etosha on our next post!