Etosha National Park, Namibia: Glub, glub

Our final safari of the honeymoon was to Etosha National Park in northern Namibia. We had heard rave reviews Etosha, because animals are easily spied at the park's easily accessible watering holes. Due to Namibia's generally dry weather, animals usually have few alternatives to the watering holes, so park visitors can sit by the watering hole and watch cheetahs at 5pm, rhinos at 6pm, elephants at 7pm, lions at 1am, and so on. You get the idea; at Etosha it's usually very easy to spot lots of animals all coming to the watering holes for a sundowner.



'Usually' is the key word here. Unfortunately for us, but luckily for the animals, the week we visited the park, Etosha received more rain than ever recorded before. New watering holes, far from curious humans, formed in remote parts of the park, and the animals dispersed. We sat by one watering hole for EIGHT hours and didn't see a single thing.

Since the "big' animals were so elusive (ie elephants, lions, cheetahs, leopards) we had to content ourselves with some of the smaller animals.




At one point we were so animal starved that we sat on the side of the road to eat lunch and we watched, with great interest... a couple of ground squirrels. These animals resemble the squirrels you might find in any city park in the US... here we were, all the way in northern Namibia, focusing all our attention on the rodent life.

Very, very sad.

Interestingly, though, despite their short stature, ground squirrels were probably the bravest animals we saw throughout our entire trip. They approached our car with almost no fear and a great deal of curiosity. It just goes to show you that size really doesn't matter....




In Etosha we never saw the most popular animals, like lions or leopards or elephants, but with enough driving and determination, we did see many others, such as warthogs, giraffe, and black-faced impalas (pictured above), in addition to zebra, hyenas, jackals, and all types of antelope. We also had the great fun of navigating/driving our tiny little front wheel drive vehicle up and down the muddy dirt roads of the park, and we only got caught in the mud and required a tow one time.