Etosha national park

My entire life my number one dream for a place to see has been an African Safari. Since we have been in Africa we have gone on a few safaris but this most recent one has topped them all. It was everything I have ever hoped and dreamed of. I will attempt to put it into words in this entry but I know I will not be able to encompass the true amazement, beauty, and magnifecence of Etosha National park. Nevertheless I will attempt.

Etosha Natioanal Park is in Northern Namibia. It is 22,000 kilometers square (cut down from its original size of 88,000). The park is in the desert and the temperatures during the late afternoon reach of 115 degrees farenheit. Unlike Kruger national park in South Africa which has rivers running through it Etosha is very dry. There are watering holes through out the park where the animals congegate. In the following few paragraphs I will talk about my experiences at the different wateringholes. December is the very end of the dry season which means there are fewer waterholes. This results in the animals being more concentrated around teh few waterholes that are left. There are three camps within Etosha where people can camp and they are all 75 kilometers from eachother. Each camp is set up at a watering hole that is lit by a floodlight at night. All the roads are dirt roads which you cannot drive more than 30 MPH on due to their conditions.

On the night of the 27th we slept just outside of the park. We had a BBQ, or as they call it a brie in south African. After we ate and the fire died down we looked up and the sky seemed to glow from all of the stars. We we amazed at the absolute beauty of it. I had heard Namibia had amazing stars but nothing could have prepared me for what we saw. A few shooting stars flew through the sky for what seemed like minutes at a time. We eventually tore ourselves from star gazing because we ha d abig day ahead of us. We were going into Etosha, one of the best places in all of Africa to see what I have always dreamt of, LIONS!!!

We awoke at sunrise, packed the tent, and headed into the park. Within minutes of being in the park we saw thousands of animals migrating to and from someplace in the distance. We assumed it was a watering hole and so we drove as close as we could. This watering hole was at the first camp and so we coul dget out of the car and get within 25 feet of it. There was one elephant, hundreds of zebra, springbuck, oryx and a myriad of other buck. New animals were in a constant line coming and going to drink their full.

We stayed here for an hour or so and then headed out to explore the park. We soon learned that from about 12-5 in the afternoon there is not much to see. It is just too hot for the animals to move around. We took this opportunity in the height of the heat to go to the camp to read and relax (I just finished Nelson Mandela's autobigraphy... probably the best book I have ever read).

That night we went to the watering hole at our camp around 9:30 and it was like a play. In the first act we saw 3 elephants drinking and spraying themselves with water. the elephant left and shortly thereafter a rhino came to drink. After about 15 minutes the Rhino left. The watering hole was abandoned for 30 minutes or so and then we saw movement. I instantly recognized the animal as the animal I have dreamt about seeing for so long. Six female lions stroled confidently out of the shadows to have a drink. We were so close that we could hear their tongues lapping up the water. After they drank their full they lied down to rest up before the night time hunt. The lighting was not great but nonetheless it was amazing to see the lions.

As a young boy I used to think I was a lion in my previous life. I slept with a picture of a lion over my bed and we used to exchange roars. Byt the age of 6 I had perfected my lions roar and in my mind it was as life like as it could be.

The next day we awoke at sunrise to head out and see as much as we could. we spent a total of 4 days in the park and each day seemed to get better than the previous.

I will hopefully be able to write about the next three days later today but I need to get going for the time being. I am in Botswana which borders Namibia but seems like a different world.