After having been to three magnificient national parks, we were slightly concerned that Etosha might be turn out to be "just another one". Boy, we shouldn't have worried. If Kruger had been our entry park and Chobe and Moremi had given us ample wilderness and driving through the untamed bush, Etosha turned out to be another jewel with good infrastructure and more cat sightings than all of the other parks combined.
We arrived in the morning to Namutoni, our first camp of three, which is set around an old German garrison fort that housed a range of conveniences: shop, restaurant, swimming pool to name a few. Before settling down for the day we decided to try our luck on an afternoon game drive and although we missed out on any cat sightings at our chosen waterhole just before sunset, we did see quite a few other animals. The big draw of Etosha is that water is very limited in winter, so most animals crowd together in a small area of the park close to the waterholes. Conveniently, that area is criss-crossed with a number of good roads - which we now explored. Besides a fairly large number of springboks, zebras and other plains game, the highlight was a huge rhino crossing the road just in front of us.
Coming back just before sunset, we went to check out the arguably biggest attraction of the park, right outside the fort. All of Etosha's camps have an man-made waterhole next to the electric fence that runs around the camp. You basically show up, sit on a bench or stand around, and the animals drop by to drink all through the day. This is a markedly lazy way to do spotting and you had to share the moment with a few dozen other guests, but it proved to amazingly satisfying nonetheless. It is also the next to only way of spotting any wild animals after dark, as driving in the park itself is not allowed on your own after sunset. Contrary to initial assumption, a wide variety of animals showed up and weren't bother the slightest bit with the rather large amount of camera lenses and binoculars pointed at them from a few meters away. This makes Etosha a paradise for easy photo tourism and there were some ridiculously large cameras around when we arrived at the observation area. Our "welcome committee" consisted of three large elephants drinking, mixing with a few giraffes and antilopes. And half an hour later we hit the jackpot, as a fully grown leopard jumped out of a tree at dusk at the opposite side of the waterhole and slowly walked along the edge of the water. Leopard almost exclusively move at night and under stealth which makes them extremely difficult to find on self-drives, so we were super excited to finally get to see one. Even though it lasted only a few minutes, we were buzzed!
Day two in Etosha saw us moving to Camp Halali, slowly moving through the park from east to west. We got up early and took our time, leisurely driving around the park and looking out for the wildlife. We were rewarded with lots of sightings, including some hartebees (new animal!) and a pair of lions at one of the waterholes. Despite an armada of cars and people with monster cameras pointing out of the windows we initially didn't know about any lions and were trying to understand what everbody was looking at. There were so many other animals at the waterhole that we thought it unlikely for predators to be around. Only after about 10 minutes and changing observation point, we could see the twitching ears - which also explained the extreme caution of the Kudus and other antilopes around.
We arrived in Halali at noon, and after a quick lunch Yeya made a visit to the freezing cold pool which also served as the hangout place of about 30 odd junior rugby players from England that were touring Namibia. We decided to skip our customary afternoon drive in favour of a siesta and a longer sit at the waterhole in Halali and an arranged night drive, which turned out to be an expensive but very good decision. On arrival at the waterhole an hour before sunset we saw our second leopard of the trip, this time still in daylight. And during the night drive, the searchlight from the car hit a springbok on a ridge and seconds later we could see a lioness storming towards it. It missed out on the kill and our guide explained that the searchlight had probably disturbed her stalking and that she had had to attack before being in position. We felt sorry to have disturbed her dinner plans, but seeing her sitting 5m away from the car, reconsidering her next move and mustering us disapprovingly was breathtaking nonetheless. We saw about a dozen more lions on the drive, but most of them were further away and difficult to observe, so we felt very lucky that we had been so close to a hunt.
We had learned much about the prides of lions walking around Etosha from our guide during the drive, so come next morning we decided to try and capitalise on this information. We went back to the waterholes that were most promising and sure enough, we struck lucky when a huge male lion came striding right towards our car at one of the waterholes. Growling, marking his territory and drinking, he walked around for about 10 minutes before laying down for a siesta, giving us the opportunity for some fantastic pictures and videos. The rest of the morning drive gave us tons of more animals, including a giant (500+) herd of zebra, plenty oryx and springbok, another lion and two elephants before arriving in Okakuejo, our last camp in Etosha.
After the success of the camp waterholes, we decided to dedicate the evening exclusively to waterhole watching, again striking lucky. At least three black rhinos and a large pride of lions showed up over the course of the evening, together with the usual suspects of elephants and antilopes plus a surprisingly large number of black-backed jackals. We sipped red wine and enjoyed the show!
On our last day we leisurely ambled around the backroads of Etosha one more time, before hitting the exit gate at around noon. Happy and satisfied with our last animal-centric highlight of the trip we kicked the car into high gear and rolled of on the tarmac towards the Namibian hinterlands...
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