Day 10

After our epic cheetah adventure, our wildlife viewing was only beginning – on Day 11 we started heading towards Etosha National Park for our stint of game drives in one of Namibia’s largest National Parks/Wildlife reserves. What’s really cool about the “park” is that the animals are just going about their normal lives, they’re not fed or interacted with in any way other than a supplemental water supply. This goes so far as to say that there’s not even a fence around the national park  itself – the animals are completely free to roam off the property if somehow they got that far (apparently this isn’t an issue? Crazy.)

We were warned before we got on the bus in the morning that once we got into the park, there would NOT be any ability to stop for toilet breaks, even the infamous “bush toilets” because it’s illegal in the park to get out of the truck. So we ALL went to the restroom at our last stop (we stopped for lunch right outside the park entrance) and it’s a good thing we did because the 17 kilometer drive to our camping site in Etosha ended up taking us over four hours because of all of the AMAZING animals we were able to see!

Not ten minutes after we entered the park, we came up on our first watering hole and we were greeted by an entire family of elephants, including the most ADORABLE tiny baby elephant. We oohed and ahhed, and then we watched as various other animals tried to get into the watering hole while the elephant family was there. Spoiler Alert: NO ONE else was allowed while the elephants where there. SORRY GUYS!

We drove around for tons more time and got to see more elephant, giraffe, ostrich, zebra, oryx, springbok, and wildebeest… but no lion, rhino, or leopard.

Once we arrived at camp, it was SO HOT – I’d honestly say the hottest it’s been out of all of the days. We quickly pitched up our tents, changed into swimsuits, and hit the pool. The water was *lovely* and this was the nicest campground we’d stayed at so far, since it’s also one of Etosha’s luxury resorts, so there were three pools, a bar, a restaurant, a kiosk, and a convenience store. The convenience store had ice cream pops, which several of us took advantage of both days we were here.

After the pool, we showered up and then headed over to the campground’s watering hole to do some animal viewing before dinner. The watering hole was excellent – after dinner we actually went back to see some of the more nocturnal activity and we were rewarded not ONLY with giraffe and elephant, but with FOUR black rhino (only black rhino live in Namibia, no white ones, due to their difference in diet and the availability of food sources). They drank for a while and then they GOT IN THE POOL and splashed around with each other for a while. I’d say we watched them for almost an hour before some of us called it a night. A few (myself included) stuck it out for a while longer and we were rewarded with seeing a LION roaming through the back of the watering hole’s lit area. So lucky! After that we watched for a few more minutes before also tucking in for the night.

Once we were tucked in, we actually heard the roar of lions from the distance as we were drifting off to sleep. Un. Freaking. Real.

Day 11

We got up well and early to head out on our second Etosha game drive – so early that we didn’t even have breakfast!

The early start was absolutely worth it though because we saw an entire pride of lions, in addition to a ton of other amazing wildlife (think HERDS of springbok!). We were out for about 3-4 hours in the morning, before popping back for brunch… which included BACON. YES.

After brunch it started to heat up again, so some of us headed to the pool area for a drink and a dip. I personally had an “appletiser” which I had never had before but Kitty and Amberlee recommended. It’s basically sparking apple juice and it was PERFECT. Six of us were going on a second game drive for the day, so we headed back to the campsite around 2:30 to get changed and ready to go.

At 3:30 we set out, and we were out until about 6:30 (we HAD to come back for dinner of course!). At first we were pretty bummed out because it didn’t seem like we’d see anything… until we saw about THIRTY zebra marching across the desert.

Including. Babies.

We about died of happiness just watching them migrate across our entire field of vision for about 20 minutes.

After that, things picked up with the theme of, “Baby Animals!”

We saw baby springbok and baby oryx and also some adult elephant and giraffe… as well as a hyena and some jackal.

The highlight though was RIGHT at the end before we were heading back. We swung by a salt flat and thought we just had a pile of rocks to look at… and then one of the rocks moved!

We were greeted by two adult male and two adult female lion! We watched them roll around for probably half an hour before finally heading back to camp.

We returned to find Andrew “sleeping” on the dinner table and everyone gathered around… apparently “sleeping” was equivalent to “having 2.5 bottles of wine in the sun” and he was pretty obliterated. WHOOPS. He ended up sleeping through our braai, which he was devastated to learn upon waking the following morning.

Post-braai, we all headed to the watering hole to see if there would be any action (NOT as exciting as the night before – apparently we were super lucky!), and then headed to bed after making a plan to get up at 4:30am the next day to try and see some early morning animal movement and the sunrise before leaving Etosha.