From the Waterberg Plateau we drove to the Etosha National Park, the biggest game reserve of southern Africa. We bought a permit and we could enter the park.
General Information.
The Etosha Park is a large area around a salt pan. It covers 22.270 sq. Km (> half the size of the Netherlands) and stretches 300 km from west to east and 110 km from north to south. The great Etosha pan covers about 500 sq. km and lies towards the east of the park. It's a dried up lake that fills with water sometimes during the wet season.
You can visit about half of the park. The rest is open only for guided groups. There is a lot of game that is relatively easy to spot in the dry season, this in contrast to the famous Kruger Park in South Africa. In the winter the animals concrete around the waterholes. We spoke with South African people and the told us that it's easier to see game in Etosha than in the Kruger Park.
Some of the waterholes are natural, while others are fed artificially from boreholes. Because they impaired the size of the park dramatically they had to make more drinking places. You can't see the different between artificially and natural waterholes.
When we entered Etosha we saw a couple of giraffes. They
were a lot larger than we expected, in a normal car you are
sitting near to the ground. At first we were frightened a little
bit because what will they do: run away or attack. They did
nothing and kept on eating from the trees. We were told that the
animals don't see the cars as a natural enemy and that they are
used to it.
We stayed in two of the three resting camps, which are in the game reserve. The Ministry of Environment and Tourism manages the camps. At each campsite there is a restaurant, a filling station and a shop. There are no guided gamedrives in Etosha. You can take your own car: drive to a waterhole, turn off the engine and simply wait, the game will appear in a few minutes. You must strictly follow the rules for gamedrives: e.g. only between sunrise and sunset and you are allowed to open your windows but you may never step out of your car. There are penalties on a violation of the rules.
Near every campsite they made a waterhole. So you can
sit there behind the fence and easily observe the drinking game.
These waterholes are floodlit so you can also view the game at
night. Strangely enough the animals don't seem to bother the
light. The zebra's on the picture we saw near campsite Namutoni.
A solitary wildebeest you can see on the next picture.
Large herds of wildebeest we didn't saw, maybe because of the
season.
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