There Are No Animals In Namibia

We headed north to Etosha National Park, which is a very large park centred around a salt pan which is dry for most of the year, but attracts pelicans and flamingos for the brief time that it has water in it. When dry, as it was on our visit, not much wildlife lives in the pan itself, but plenty live in the greener areas around it.

Emma and I have a points-based 'spotting' game to relieve the boredom of long drives. In the UK it amounts to 'There's a cow. How many points?', or 'There's the sea. I get 10 points' etc. I am the one that generally allocates points, and funnily enough, I usually win, though I'm sure there is no correlation between these two facts. Points often get allocated after the spot too, so if Emma sees a cow, that often ends up being 1 point. If I see a sheep, strangely that can be 5 points. At least until the next time we play the game.
In Namibia, this game became a lot more interesting. Rather than cows and sheep, we were looking for various types of antelope, elephant, snakes etc. And this time points were generally allocated before a spot, making the game a lot more competitive. "Impala. 10 points!" and "Ostrich. 15 points" and similar were shouted from the car at regular intervals. But the big prizes were yet to be seen on this holiday. 50 points for an elephant, the same for a rhino, 20 for giraffe etc made things a lot more interesting as we entered the game reserve.

The first night we were staying in Etosha itself. There are three camps in the reserve, allowing you to stay there and experience some night views of the animals. The park itself closes at sunset, so you can't drive yourself around the park after then (though you can book and pay for specific night drives if you wish), but each of the camps has its own waterhole within the camp, which are often frequented by wildlife.

The camp we stayed at, Okaukuejo Rest Camp, we later decided was the best of the three (after visiting, but not staying at, the other two over the next couple of days) - it had nice, though very small, rooms, and a lovely waterhole with good visibility around it. After finally finding our room, checking out the rest of the camp, we went to this waterhole just before sunset to see what was around.

I spotted the elephant first. 50 points to me. It hung around for a while, drinking and generally seeming to just chill out. There were plenty of people watching it, but it seemed very used to that and not bothered at all. Just after sunset we left the elephant to it and went for dinner, returning to the waterhole after dinner to see another elephant (no points for a second elephant) had joined it. Or it may have been two different ones. It was really interesting watching how they interacted - they seemed close, and after 30 minutes or so of nuzzling against each other, they both wandered off in different directions.

10 minutes later, as it was starting to get quite dark (though the waterhole is floodlit), Emma spotted a rhino (50 points) emerging. For the next hour or so we watched a total of 5 rhino visit the waterhole, including a young one, with some stand-offs, some grunting, some running around and some bathing. Quite fascinating to watch, though in the failing light it was a little difficult seeing everything (and photos were pretty poor, though I was heartened to see that the guy next to me that had an expensive DSLR camera on a tripod seemed to be getting the same sort of quality photos as my little pocket camera). A couple of jackals didn't add to the points totals, as we had seen some in Walvis Bay previously.

The next few days were spent exploring the game reserve. Whilst there were a lot of animals around, the park was large, and there were plenty of times we saw nothing for 10 minutes or so, leading to the cry that is the title of this post - obviously untrue, but it was funny at the time.

Herds of zebra became commonplace. Springbok were pretty much ignored after the first day, as they were generally everywhere. As the days went on, other animals, which initially inspired much photo-taking and Ooh-ing and Aah-ing, were dismissed with a "oh, there's another bunch of impala over there". Even giraffes, which on first sighting were greeted with enthusiasm, produced a fairly blazé attitude later on, though they were still interesting to watch, especially at waterholes where their method of bending down to drink by splaying their front legs was pretty comical to watch.

Etosha consists of many waterholes, some natural and some man made, connected by generally fairly good gravel roads. There's a 60kph speed limit in the park, and although there are quite a few visitors, it is big enough that once out of the camps it doesn't feel busy at all, and there seems to be few cars in the same place. We generally just toured the waterholes, waiting by some, moving on at others where there were no animals, and in some we found animals already there.

We spotted no more rhinos at all, and had to wait for our last day there, and in fact the last waterhole we visited, to see more elephants, though that was a good sighting, with lots of interaction between them, and giraffes in the background and foreground. We saw a couple of small groups of lions, though they were not very active, and generally quite hidden at times in the long grass. A cheetah was a good spot, though it didn't hang around very long, and I was pleased to see a hyena on our last day, carrying the remains of some kill or other that it had stolen from a nearby lion.

Animal spotting became an art, which Emma was more skilled at than I. Obviously most animals were pretty well camouflaged against their background, though ostriches, with their deep black bodies and long, thin legs, were pretty easy to spot. Not always, though, as illustrated by Emma's comment one day: "Ostriches off to our left..... but they are a long way away..... and they may not be ostriches." (they were, in fact, trees). Matched only by another quote from Emma: "There's a bird of prey in the tree to our right. Or it could be a pigeon.". Termite mounds also led to some disappointment, as a fairly nearby termite mound often looked like a distant elephant or rhino.

When you stop to view the animals, they invariably start to walk away from you. Although they are used to cars, they understandably don't want to hang around when you pull up. By the time Emma had got her camera set up ready for a photo, the animals were usually slowly moving away. We decided Emma should create a photo book of "Etosha bottoms".

Some animals we had no trouble in spotting was the large monitor lizard that was sitting in the middle of the road just round a corner, and Emma had to swerve to avoid, the family of warthogs that ran out in the road in front of Emma, and the snake which literally sprung out of the long grass by the side of the road, right into the side of the car which Emma was driving at the time. So basically animals were hard to spot unless they had a death wish.

The snake was an interesting one. Very large (about 2m long) and fairly fat, but with few markings. Once again our thoughts went to all the poisonous snakes we are (okay, I am) interested in. After it flung itself against our car, it lay in the road writhing a bit. Emma stopped and backed the car next to it so we could have a better view of it, but only on the condition that I roll my window up. I was happy to comply, knowing that spitting cobras were not unheard of here. The snake seemed ok, though a little dazed, I went through the possible snakes it could be in my head - spitting cobra? Maybe, but no sign of a neck ruff, Black mamba? Could be, but probably too light in its markings, but could be a young one? Adder? Nope - no suitable markings. In the end we settled for a young black mamba. Wow. Good sighting! Despite the fact that a couple of days later we showed a guide our photo and he insisted it was a boomslang, I was pretty sure it wasn't (eyes too small, and not a tree for miles around - boomslang are renowned for having very large eyes and they live in trees) - to be fair to the guide, it's not easy recognising snakes from blurry photos - I am now, after looking in some books, pretty sure it wasn't a poisonous snake at all, but an olive grass snake. A bite may have made me throw up, but wouldn't have killed me. Ah well, maybe next time.

I thought Etosha was a lovely reserve. Large enough to spread out all the visitors, and with enough waterholes that people didn't congregate in the same places, and with enough wildlife to keep it interesting, but not so much as to make you feel you are in a safari park (the English variant!). It wasn't expensive to visit (entry fees about £10 a day, for the two of us and a car), and the ability to stay within the park, by a waterhole, was really interesting.

Other than the first night spent inside the park, the other three nights were spent at a lodge just outside the park, Mushara Bush Camp. This was a really nice lodge in a really peaceful setting. and as usual with very attentive staff. They generally made a good effort to produce vegetarian food, though on the evening we had another braai (BBQ), they strangely didn't offer a veggie alternative to the grilled eland they had on offer (I still find it strange that people spend the day looking for wild animals like eland, and then being excited when they see one, and taking lots of photos and watching it moving around, only to then finish the day by eating one). We were left with the boiled potatoes and cauliflower and 'pap' - a local dish which looked to me like a very dull porridge made from cereal with no taste and a not very nice texture. Which in fact is exactly what it was. I didn't have any. Emma did and hated it.

Our wildlife encounters didn't end when we left the park. One evening at the lodge we were sat looking up at the lovely, clear, starry sky outside our tent (a fixed tent, with cement base and some walls, so could hardly be called a tent really) and a rustle in the tree above us made me think a squirrel was running around in it, but the torch briefly revealed a little bush baby in the branches, before it ran off away from the light.

After three days in the park we had probably just about had enough and were ready to move on. One more stop before our journey home.

Places stayed: Okaukuejo Rest Camp; Mushara Bush Camp
Places visited: Etosha National Park
Notable animals seen: Zebra, Impala, Springbok, Oryx, Kudu, Wilderbeest, Giraffe, Jackal, Hyena, Lion, Cheetah, Elephant, Rhino, Ostrich, Eland, Hartebeest, Dik dik, Mongoose, Monitor lizard, Warthog, Olive grass snake, Vulture, Hornbill, Bustard, Secretary bird, some large raptor or other