Etosha National Park

Our next three nights and 4 days were spent in Etosha National Park. Etosha is voted one of the top 5 parks in all of Africa. Most of the park is made up of the Etosha Pan, a humongous salt flat, that when dry in the wintertime, animals must seek water at one of the many water holes around the park. It was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The weather was perfect, we had our own vehicle to drive around in, and there were animals a plenty. Within our first our, on our way to our campsite, we found a couple of lions. Every morning, save one, we found lions. One morning it was just us for about half an hour watching these lions, until a truck pulled up with a family of seven. The kids climbed out of their truck and sat on the roof of the truck's cab. As the lions came closer and closer to our vehicles we could see that the lions were eying those little kids as something tasty. They kept looking at them intensely and crouching down. Then all of a sudden, they started towards our car. There was a moment where I could have touched the male lions' head out of my window. There was also a moment when we realized that they differentiated between the car and us as a whole, and us as people separate from the car. At that point, Dan told us to roll up our windows slowly. Naturally, I rolled mine up slowly! Afterward, Dan said it was a little too slowly and there was a moment when he thought the lion was ready to reach in and eat me. But man, do I have cool photos! These two brother lions ended up walking right past and rubbing themselves on our back bumper, which was entirely too cool because that is not an aggressive act, it is more of them saying 'hey, you guys are okay'. Turns out we were the ones almost eaten and not the nice children farther away. We actually stopped them later and asked them to send us their photos and video of the lions by our car. Our adrenaline was pumping so hard after that.

We continued to see amazing animals, including the very, very rare ardwolf. Their mostly nocturnal and we caught on just before sunset. We saw rhino, elephants, springboks, oryx/gemsboks (my favorite), black-faced impala, gazillions of zebra, the rare damara dik-dik, giraffes, wildebeests, and much much more. Our campsite had a flood-lit watering hole where we watched the rare and super endangered black rhino drink every night. We also were lucky enough to see a leopard drinking there. It was so stealthy most people didn't even notice it there. We saw some gemsboks fighting, which was my highlight I think. Our car was dangerously charged by a big bull elephant. We were hurrying back to our campsite before sunset when the gates closed and this elephant would not get out of the road. He was just making us reverse and reverse. Thankfully a park game vehicle came and chased him off the road allowing us to pass. If they didn't show up, we had no idea what to do other than hope the ellie would move off the road soon.

We also saw a honey badger at our campsite. Honey badgers are also incredibly rare and incredibly dangerous. They are about the size of a large skunk or racoon, and black with a white stripe down its back. They are aggressive and vicious enough to take down lions. Nothing messes with honey badgers. One night while eating dinner, Adam and I saw it walking right behind Mandy, probably less than 5 feet away. Dan immediately told us to get up and slowly walk backwards away from it. The boys then watched it carefully and tried to chase it away, cautiously, with rocks. It went under our car and then scampered off into the bush. That was by far our closest call with the wildlife, more so or on par with the lion.





Mom and baby Black Rhino coming to the Halali waterhole at night.








Also, due to some mis-communication, we only paid for two of our four nights camping! We were also 'allowed' to sit out of our windows (and kids allowed on the roof of their trucks in front of lions). There seemed to be no rules in Etosha, which was kind of fun.

Etosha was an incredible part of our trip, and it was only the beginning.