Niall's Travel Blog

Etosha Park

In Swakopmund I saw a postcard of Okaukuejo waterhole in Etosha showing a ridiculous density of animals. Thinking this would be much like a Big Mac advertisment we arrived in Etosha with much lower expectations. However, our first sight of Okaukuejo was even more incredible - there were about a though or so zebra, springbok, wildebeast and oryx packed into an area the size of a football pitch all waiting their turn for a drink.

We spent three days driving around the park from waterhole to waterhole spotting black rhino, giraffe, elephants and even a rare leopard. Some of the more noteworthy scenes included a magpie incessantly biting the tail of big lizard that was too slow to retaliate, a pair of giraffe fighting in a matrix-style flurry of neck swings and being stuck on the road for about twenty minutes behind a herd of sixty elephants!

With the elephants in the way we thought we weren't going to make it to our rest camp (they close at sunset and it's illegal to be outside a camp after dark) when a truck of locals came speeding towards the elephants. At first our only thought was that they didn't see the elephants (how this could have been was another matter) but as they approached they started swerving the truck and beeping the horn. The elephants had no option but to hightail in order to avoid a collision and using the temporary gap in the road caused by the chaos we were able to make it back to the camp just as the sun hit the horizon.

posted by Niall at 2:50 p.m.